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Posted by libby and roberta

After two years of slaving on artblog, we decided to search for the mighty buck--on google and amazon. So, don't forget when you're making purchases at amazon, to click through from our button in the left column. We get a cut of anything you buy that way. As for google, in their program, we get paid per page view, so every time you look at artblog, you're helping us.

Artist alert!

See those ads in the upper right corner? You too can buy space on artblog to advertise your upcoming or current show. It's only $20/month to link to your or your gallery's web site.

permanent link   libby and roberta 11:34 AM
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Posted by roberta

paper rad
Like Libby, I was running around yesterday looking and taking pictures and trying to figure out the next parking spot for yet another part of town for yet another gallery in the increasingly sprawling and imby* scene. (here's a photo of one of my favorite Mayor Street initiatives -- blue water in the fountain at Love Park. The cotton candy color makes me smile every time. This is my drive by photo. That's City Hall, right, in the background. I'm guessing Street can see his art project from his office window.)

*in my back yard

I'm in a rush now but will put in some links to peoples' websites later. Promise.

Psychedelic Paper world at Space 1026



The Paper Rad kids are having fun oh yes indeedy. Alf, Garfield, trolls, Bart Simpson, Gumby. All the childhood friends of the young 20-somethings and 30-somethings appear, painted, animated, on videos and in games in the loop-de-loopy cardboard city put together by the collective at the collective Space 1026. Very much fun. Here's a few pix of what looks like a playhouse/tent city for teddy bears and their owners.


Teddy is playing some battleship-type Nintendo game in one of the many cubby holes that evoke childhood's tent cities made out of sheets and blankets.


You can't see what's on the tv here in the family room but it's psychedelic guru Garfield. And watching and hanging out are little Garfields and two Gumbys who look like they may be babysitting. Imagine.


The white dog is looking at himself as he appears animated in a low low tech black and white game environment on the Commodore computer.

All in all, the installation's trippy and fun. There's a painted skateboard ramp made out of cardboard that I imagine pays homage to Space 1026's original wooden skateboard ramp. If there's irony here I missed it. Sunny and bright, the whole thing's like a nostalgia love fest for the 70s and 80s. More on Paper Rad here.


Mud and tree hugging

Leslie Kaufman and Peter Kinney's show at Highwire is just great. Kinney's prolific. His mud and watercolor paintings occupy almost every available space on the walls. They make a kind of loving hug for Kaufman's iconic tree carvings which suggest people and lives both ordinary and extraordinary.


The work by both artists is strong and in their materials-fueled art-making they have much in common. Kinney's smaller works, like Sunset Moonrise pictured above have a beauty that is delicate, something I don't usually think of when I see his work, known for its use of mud as a drawing material. I think the watercolor used as it is in this work -- feels right. And the scale -- small -- goes far towards making it a more engaging piece about the earth and me, not just the earth and the artist.


Kaufman's pieces stand out for their quietude and assurance. With the combination of harsh carving marks and natural wood and in several cases industrially milled wood added for contrast, the figures and other works seem vulnerable and if not fierce then edgy and provocative. They have an ancient quality like primitive carvings by aboriginals.



Kaufman is the president and founder of Philadelphia Sculptors, a group Libby and I belong to. Kaufman is also a writer. You can see her reviews in Sculpture magazine and elsewhere. For her show she composed a poem "Sequoia" that perfectly complements her work. Its themes are body, injury, recovery, survival, love, death. It's a dark poem with a personal voice and it colors the sculpture with sadness that I hadn't quite grasped when looking. Although I do believe that there is hope in the works, tied as they are to nature and its cycle of rebirth.
kaufman, leslie
kinney, peter

permanent link   roberta 8:41 AM
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Posted by libby

Ianthe Jackson (first name pronounced yanthy) is Black McLean, the eponymous hero of her solo show at Temple Gallery. It will be gone in the blink of an eye because she is one of the many Tyler MFA students who get less than a week to show their work in solo shows there.
jackson, ianthe
Jackson, who had an animated installation at Eastern State Penitentiary last year, has put up a swell installation this time, based on herself as McLean and on magazine images of people removed from their context, xeroxed, hand-colored, and made into puppets with flexible joints.

As far as Jackson herself goes, she's interested in the fluidity of identity, and how we make assumptions about others and ourselves based on the flimsiest of evidence (proof--I had assumed she was African American until I met her yesterday). She proves it in the exhibit by dressing as McLean, a working class man who, as a life-size, photo-based puppet, bicycles toward the gallery door (right top, "Black McLean" on his bike, next to Jackson).

The flat, two-sided, jointed image, is both stupid simple and funny, and the whole gizmo operation herky-jerky enough to bring up a laugh and a few observations like, so this is why it's so hard to ID a suspect on the move. But on a straight-forward entertainment level, I loved having this menacing--yet comic--bicyclist coming my way.

As in the usual happenstance of art making, Jackson said the guy who was supposed to pose for the piece couldn't make it so she filled the breach and dressed like him, thereby getting closer to her subject than if it was a real guy. The name she said was her mother's family name, and the black is because her mother always said they were black Irish, and by coincidence, the 16th-century family castle had been named "black" in Gaelic.

The other pair of pieces, both entitled "Procession," are really aspects of the same piece, one the animation video and one the puppets that Jackson used to create the video. The puppets, arrayed in a line around the main gallery, suggest scenarios that contradict our expectations, like the child who is pointing a gun at a policeman (left) or a man in blue jeans carrying a cross or the athletic crew of young men carrying a tube from which grass emerges.

In the video version, the stories change a bit as the moving puppets pass before the eyes of a recumbent Jackson, dressed in t-shirt and baseball cap, neither male nor female. The parade is full of funny incidents and strange people sightings.

Both versions of "Procession" are entertaining. Here's a link to Jackson's web page with some of her animations.

I asked Jackson about the thinking behind her installation.

"Depending on how you look, you have access to different groups of people," Jackson said while exhibit-sitting. When she was 19 she lived in Africa for a pivotal year. "You realize America is not the center of the world. I have a lot of friends from all different places in the world. I'm always bridging these social things..."

McLean, I mean Jackson, is 33, and she lived in New York for 10 years before going back to graduate school. Alas, she's returning to Brooklyn after graduation.

I wondered about returning to grad school after spending time out in the world. "It really stepped my work up a lot. I had such a nice two years to only do art and not have a job. And then you get all this feedback, which you just don't have on your own. It's a super-luxurious situation to be in. I'm glad I waited."

So if you're in Old City, this show is worth a visit.
morgan, melissa anne
Upstairs, printmaker Melissa Anne Morgan offered in her MFA show "Dam Break at Keyhole Rock," in which she displayed some beautifully dyed and printed fabrics with unexpectedly dark, menacing imagery and dramatic shifts in scale within the patterning. Morgan will stay in the area to teach printmaking while she figures out what to do next (left, Morgan and one of her pieces).

Also upstairs was prehensile jewelry by Courtney Starrett with surprising materials like rubber and shapes that come from plants and sea creatures. Some of the pieces are body-brooches that stick straight to skin (with glue, please, not pins).

permanent link   libby 2:53 PM
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Posted by libby

We got this email today from artist Daniel Heyman
heyman, daniel

Roberta and Libby,

I would like to bring to your attention that two of my woodblock pieces depicting a hooded prisoner from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were vandalized either last night or this morning by someone who scrawled "At least I was not beheaded" on one work, and drew a picture of facial features on another. I was just informed by Warren Angle, Fleisher Gallery director. He originally removed the attacked work, but I have asked him to put it back up in the exhibition. I have never had work vandalized before, it is a bit shocking. At least it tells me that the work is getting a message across! (right, Heyman's "Challenge This," five from a series of 15 water-based woodblock prints on washi paper)

Heyman's pieces are in the fourth Fleisher Challenge show (see post from Roberta here and from Libby here)

permanent link   libby 12:44 PM
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Posted by libby

Sometimes the shows I want to see fly in and out before I can get there, and I find myself wondering why I saw what I saw and didn't see what I was curious about.
minervini, rob
For a change, however, the force was with me. The show Young Art Alliance at the Philadelphia Art Alliance got a reprieve and was extended a week, to May 22. So I ran over yesterday and was rewarded with something worth looking at, thanks to curator Brian Wallace, who is director of exhibitions at the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design. The 19 artists in the show were drawn from the Moore College artists registry.

First of all, I was surprised and pleased to see recent college grad Robert Minervini in the show. I had just posted on him (here) at Art Forms Gallery, and then I saw more of his work at Qbix, which is currently hosting an Art Forms Gallery that has some work worth a visit, and here he is again.

Minervini is showing an image of a body wrapped in plastic wrap, and there's work at Qbix that's similar. Back at Art Forms, besides the Saran Wrap, there were also dressed bodies that caught my attention and seemed to be wrapped tight in other ways (left top, "Plastic Wrap," 72 x 36 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas).

I love when someone crosses my radar screen, provokes my interest and suddenly becomes part of my world.
bollinger, matt
Two other artists in the show also fit that category--Matt Bollinger and Jason Urban.
urban, jason
Bollinger, who I first saw on the walls of my neighborhood cafe, had a show at Rodger LaPelle that practically flew off the walls into the hands of collectors. The piece in Young... is sooo sexy, even the quilt is a sexy nude. The menage a trois depicted in "The Two Men Look the Same" brings nudes away from classroom studies and pumps real life and even humor into the dusty genre. I can talk about the composition and the colors and the paint quality, etc., but it's all good. I can also talk about all the stories I can read into this one, but then, so can you (right, "The Two Men Look the Same," oil on canvas, 73.5 x 37.5 inches).

Urban, who recently wrote to us that he was leaving town (see post), is a loss to the range of artmaking in Philadelphia. In this show, he takes his Benday dots and pop culture sensibility to the dark side, offering a portrait of a handgun that becomes an ominous black shadow in front of an abstracted, glamorous, moire-pattern drape in the spotlight. It's beautifully done and a smart critique of the society's values (left, "Big Guy," oil on panel, 32 x 48 inches).
hardman, jay
My fave sculpture in the show was Jay Hardman's ramshackle stretch sky blue pickup, "El Camino," with a ramshackle, stretch-house on the pickup bed. It looked to me like the rear red lights were lit. The front was in such bad repair, a bumper fallen, that the lights looked almost opaque. The mystique of this retro vehicle lives on--and takes an affectionate shellacking here ("El Camino, mixed media, 5 x 6 x 65 inches).

Here are images of other work I particularly liked:
deyling, heather
Heather Deyling's atmospheric, gothic"Night Swimming," great to look at and full of storybook creepiness as well as romantic beauty (acrylic on canvas, 48 x 65 inches).





smith, rene

Rene Smith's ultra-smooth-surfaced portraits of youth in stylish settings. Here's an indolent guy getting the sexy treatment usually reserved for women, his flesh begging for a touch. The circles on top of everything suggested the delight and romantic fantasy of blown bubbles ("Greenpoint, Brooklyn," oil on linen, 38 x 42 inches).



haarz, peter

On the other end of portraiture, Peter Haarz's "Small Tondo No. One," a 4.5-inch almost miniature that seems fresh, the worried face crammed onto a round panel--utterly traditional and totally contemporary all at once, with the sky and land making the head almost float (oil on wood).





haikes, belinda


Belinda Haikes' "Caribou," which blends the cartoon with a pared down restraint, a suggestion of human identity and vulnerability (gouache on paper, 22 x 30 inches--and, no, the reflection is on the glass, not in the image; sorree).



demcsak, jessica

Jessica Demcsak's "Epidemic," architectural blocks, pristine city scape in silhouette beneath a troubled sky (oil and acrylic on wood, 6 x 20 x 4.5 inches).



doyle, jessica

Jessica Doyle's "Reception," with sliding eyes and questionable relationships at a formal social event (see Roberta's post about Doyle's Project Room show) squeezes a lot of action and information in a limited space with small touches of color. This seems like a recording of a specific event scratched into the memory, the romantic setting and clothes contrasting the action (graphite, ink, watercolor on paper, 22 x 30).

Others in the show were Olivia Antsis; Peter Curry; Emily diGiovanni; Elise Kagan ; Amy Lincoln; Graham MacBeth; Christine Mantoruk; Margaux McAllister (layered gestures of graphite and ink on mylar); and Will Steacy (c-print of neighborhood life).

permanent link   libby 12:26 PM
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Posted by roberta

kurtz, steve

artblog contributor and activist Colette Copeland (whose installation "Abortion Dialogues" is up now at Carbon 14 Gallery -- I recommend a visit!) brought to our attention last summer the plight of artist and activist Steven Kurtz whose use of bacteria in an art project led to his seizure and prosecution for terroristic activities. See Colette's post.

The case, dangling in the wind as all things legal and courtly has not moved far over the last year. Yesterday, in Buffalo, the case's judge, Judge Kenneth Schroeder seems to have voiced some sympathy for the defendant by calling into question the prosecution's charge -- which now has been changed to "mail and wire fraud" since apparently the prosecutors couldn't make the case for the bioterrorism charge. (that's Kurtz in the white lab coat from a Critical Art Ensemble piece "Genterra")

The bacteria which forms the basis for all the charges is Serratia marcescens and it was sent to Kurtz through the mail via the assistance of a scientist colleague, thus the mail and wire fraud charge. The alleged danger of Serratia forms the basis of the government's argument for making this a criminal case according to the press release I got. But Judge Schroeder got the prosecution to admit there are no EPA or OSHA or any federal regulations about the bacteria which the defense has claimed all along is harmless.




Kurtz's defense lawyer Paul Cambria called for dismissal of the case but it's not clear what will happen even with Judge Schroeder's sympathetic probing of the prosecution's case yesterday. Read more about the whole long drawn out affair at the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund site here. (image is detail of a banner from the CAE website)

Quoting from the press release:

Whatever the outcome of today's hearing, it will not come quickly: rulings in such hearings typically take two or three months. The defense has so far cost $60,000 for Kurtz alone; as for the taxpayer bill, it is well into the millions.

Here's a link to yesterday's Newsday story. Kurtz is part of the art group the Critical Art Ensemble.

The whole government harrassment of this artist is an example of hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. Shameful.

permanent link   roberta 8:51 AM
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Posted by libby

I'm not sure why our visit to New York was somewhat dispiriting. After all, we did see some work worth seeing.
sawa, hiraki
At James Cohan Gallery we saw interesting work by Hiraki Sawa, Vito Acconci and Nam June Paik, not all of it recent. Others in this small group exhibit of five big-name artists were Roxy Paine and Ingrid Calame.

Sawa's "Stopped Things Can be Seen Between These" (left) is an installation of five huge white cast resin birds (40 3/4 x 46 x 20 1/2 inches each), pumped up kitsch curios, the color sucked out. Noises invade the space, including the sound of the artist's slow, slow, slooow voice uttering what sounded like bass violin tones. The noises require attention and time. The disjuncture of all this with the reality of live chickadees was nearly funereal. Yet the birds remain charming and lovable, even though they are basso and look cold to the touch. It's a wake up and smell the roses piece.acconci, vito

Kitsch is also on the mind of Vito Acconci, whose piece "Houses up the Wall" (right) still has something to say after 30 years. Acconci has made a homely rectangular garden structure pressed up against the wall. A couple of steps lead to the semi-enclosed seating, which is utterly claustrophobic. And the black leatherette seats invite a posture that's bent over, derriere jutting behind. This may not be leveraged concrete bras or masturbation below the gallery floor, but it's still funny and weird, a kind of anti-outdoor anti-gazebo in which to feel self-conscious and to suffer. (I forgot to mention the mirrors, which boost the self-counsciousness factor a little higher). It's sort of the opposite of wake up and smell the roses.
paik, nam june
And kitsch of another variety shows up in Nam June Paik's "Elephant Gate" (left) an ornate found gate taller than a man in front of a bank of 43 video screens showing a variety of images including a sexy, bare-breasted blond, tourist postcards of Southeast Asia, and other quick-cut images from Indian television. The sparkle of light and motion behind the traditional gate are mesmerizing--a pop culture tankha that casts a questionable light on meditation. The candles in front of the gate seem subdued, overwhelmed by the jazzy tv imagery. What's ceremonial becomes less interesting and what's hopped up becomes a new way of leaving the real world around us. The piece suggests a role for video as perhaps just another form of religion.

And speaking of worship, my favorite sign warns rabid gallery goers that there are no galleries inside. Why, it's like "Day of the Locusts."





calle, sophie

This particular group of art locusts began wondering about all the stairs we had to climb. I don't remember this being an issue in the past. We had to mount stairs to reach Paula Cooper's second space which gave us sooo little a reward in return, the space a veritable cubby hole, even by Philadelphia gallery standards). The big front stairs up to Tony Shafrazi (left), which we declined to climb, reminded me of Chichen Itza (the gallerist overheard my comment and started to laugh, which made me feel bad for not going inside; after all, how often do you get that much reaction out of the people in a New York gallery?) One more grouse about the upstairs galleries--it's hard to do the stick-your-head-in-the-door-and-run trick.


At the street-level main space of Paula Cooper, "Exquisite Pain," an installation by Sophie Calle, was in need of some exquisite editing. Each daily snapshot from a three-month trip had a lovely red stamp that counted down the days until Calle would return home only to discover that her boyfriend had left her. The imagery didn't carry her story or the sad stories of others whom she involved in an exorcism of her misery. Enough said.
barth, uta
Photographer Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar (I think this place also used to be a first floor gallery; what the...) showed some images of flowers that were chilly and thin. Gone the point of still life, here, the meditation upon nature severed from its natural environment. Instead, we have technical tricks--is it a photo or a painting; is it a photogram or a painting; how is it mounted? Here were flowers in daylight-flooded architectural space--pretty and design-y, but not so interesting. I couldn't help but wonder if the similarity of the artist's name to the art dealer Ute Barth might have given the artist a leg up.
bozhkov, daniel
Daniel Bozhkov's "Advanced Swedish for Beginners" (right) at Andrew Kreps got a number of chuckles out of all of us, i.e. Roberta, her sister Cate, our friend Ava, and me. An Ikea-furnished bedroom was behind white gauzy Ikea curtains with how-to images showing anything from evacuating an aircraft to building a bookcase to engaging in sex. A television on the bed showed the artist and a native Swedish speaker taking turns reading from the Ikea catalog. It's all a little claustrophobic, cheesy and quite funny .


In front of the curtain, rows of Ikea chairs with safety vests underneath are in rows in front of a video of a plane window with the artist tracing on it what he sees outside--ice crystals and the plane's wing. This brought me right back to Grady Gerbracht's DVD slide show of his commute on New Jersey Transit (see post), in which he makes quick drawings on the windows of the bus of what he sees outside. But by time he's done with each sketch, the subject is long gone and another cityscape takes its place, one that no longer fits inside the sketch outlines. In Bozhkov's drawing, what may disappear is the people inside the plane, victims of icing. The commonplace in Bozhkov's (and our) world becomes a threat to our individuality and a threat to our lives.
gobel, james
Some felt "paintings" by James Gobel at Kravets/Wehby amused for the technique and material as well as for the Louis XIV-style posturing of overweight, overdressed, overcoiffed gents living the Alex Katz life amid ribbon festoons and mushrooms in front of the Alps--or the Rockies--or maybe the San Gabriel Mountains. The light is L.A. and so is the lifestyle. I was reminded of the time my parents unwittingly went to the mostly-gay beach at Riis Park. The crowd on the next blanket pulled out their wine glasses and my dear mother leaned over to suggest that perhaps paper cups would be more discreet. Then she realized she'd missed the point. Gobel celebrates the point.

He also strikes a blow for the not-so-buff pouffy male and his right to be decorative, too. The work is arch drawing-room farce, awfully well done, but sooo slick, more slick than his former work, and ultimately it seems a bit like profiteroles for the hungry.



sonhouse, jeff
I found it amusing and instructive that this fabric work of art by and for men was across the street from Jeff Sonhouse's fabric art work of African American men at Kustera Tilton Gallery. The work is the opposite of arch. The images are bitter riffs on black stereotypes. Their methodology is outsider-y rigid portraits with decorative fabrics and hair of matches (loved it) or steel wool (didn't really want to look at it). The faces are masked and scary. The work is interesting, intense, and a little hard to look at, let alone take in--but that's the point (left, "Diffusion," the hair made up of burnt matches that left soot and scorching).
schaechter, judith
I'm going to leave wholly to Roberta the excellent Judith Schaechter, at Clare Oliver, who seems to be going in a couple of different directions and mixing some political issues with the psychological ones. I'm also leaving Roberta the ambitious Neo Rauch, whose strange 1950s textbook colors and costumes merge with mysterious narratives about power in the workers' state (left, Schaechter's "Body Bag"; right below, Neo Rauch's "Neue Rollen" with a gallery goer perusing it).
rauch, neo

By time we left New York, I had had quite enough--and yet not quite enough. We discovered all the shows we missed when Roberta read the Chelsea gallery flyer on the way home. So I'm dying to go back. And thank you, Ava, for driving.

permanent link   libby 8:51 PM
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Posted by roberta

slaven, jessica

My piece this week is about the Penn MFA exhibit at the Ice Box Project Space and the PAFA students shows -- the undergraduate show and the MFA show. Read it here.

(image right is Mark Stafford's self-portrait video projection from the PAFA MFA show)

and left below is Jessica Slaven's "Escape Raft" from the Penn MFA exhibit at the Ice Box)
stafford, mark




And in the editors' choice section (the listings), information about another new artist's group with aspirations -- the Artists of 1801. They're opening the doors to their live/work space for an exhibition with open studios and jam session and cookout and film showing this Saturday, May 21, noon-8 pm. Read it here.

Jon Preeb, one of the 1801 artists is the contact person. See his website for more on his work and for a virtual postcard of the show.

And because the world is a very small place, when I was looking at the Penn MFA show last week I was escorted by Sean Riley, Penn Design's Exhibition Coordinator and a 2004 grad of the program. Riley told me he lives in the 1801 complex and shares some joint living space with Isobel Sollenberger and John Gibbons who are participating in this Saturday's doings. Riley said he wasn't able to.

permanent link   roberta 11:47 AM
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Posted by libby

Leeway actually put out the list of the women who made the first cut to receive the new "Transformation Award." The list of 46 artists, writers, actors, etc., is online here. Don't even bother to look for our names. We're trying not to be bitter.

permanent link   libby 9:15 AM
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Posted by libby

When I stopped in at Pentimenti last week, I learned that gallery owner Christine Pfister was working on a number of international projects, some quite real and coming up soon, some just in the thinking phase (right, a photo by Joseph Hu of a twig poking out of the snow, a product of his residency in Switzerland).
hu, joseph
One of the projects is an outgrowth of being next to Art Forum Ute Barth gallery at the Art Chicago art fair a few years ago. The resulting project is "Criss Cross," an exchange of artists in two simultaneous shows, with American artists getting a chance to show in Zurich while Swiss artists get a chance to show in Philadelphia. We benefit too, getting a chance to see what's going on abroad. So coming up June 3 to July 10, look for Swiss artists Maria Eitle-Vozar, Susanne Keller, Vera Rothamel, Judith Trepp and Karina Wisniewska--all artists from Art Forum Ute Barth, Zurich--at Pentimenti. And if you're in Zurich, you will be able to see Pentimenti artists Steven Baris, Richard Bottwin, Kevin Finklea, Kathryn Frund and Franco Muller at Art Forum Ute Barth (left, work by Eitle-Vozar, that reminds me of work by local artist Ava Blitz).
pfister, christine
(For posts on all the local artists, you can check in our artists index, left, for where to look in our archives.)

Pfister, who is a native of Switzerland, is also thinking about trying to set up a second artist residency in Switzerland similar to the one that Joseph Hu had experienced a couple of years ago.
eitle-vozar, maria
Hu, when he came back from Switzerland, poured out the soul of his experience in a show at Vox Populi that caught our attention (see post here). He has stayed on our radar screen ever since, producing art that is progressively more confident and interesting(cup sculpture right, and wall of a photograph repeated on 528 color postcards, left, were part of the show at Vox, a take on Swiss tourism and kitsch).

Here's Hu's statement from that show:

To live in Switzerland is to love it. During the winter and spring of 2003, I spent 3 months in the small cantonal capital of Solothurn, at the foot of the Jura Mountains. The experience was one that deeply affected me. I was suddenly in an alien environment where I didn’t know the language or customs, and I seemed alone. I spent my time traveling, observing, and absorbing new sights and sounds. I kept a journal describing in detail, my daily activities and kept a photo journal that I contributed to everyday. I took classes to learn the language. I made new friends. I fell in love.

In an attempt to define my experiences, I’ve made work with the intention of recreating bits and pieces of memory, and that jumbles together the visual and emotional souvenirs that I have of Switzerland. In stereoscopic photos, cardboard models, and postcards, my memories surrender and become anew.

Pfister said she worked with people in the Swiss town of Solothurn to create the residency. Five jurors entertained 50 proposals, some from around the country, and chose Hu for the project, called SoPhilArt (Solothurn-Philadelphia-Art). Hu got a studio and an aprtment, 3000 Swiss francs, and a guide, with whom he shared to studio. At the end, he exhibited his work in a commercial gallery there (right, a recent, photo-based painting of Hu's, "Friday Night Up All Night," typical of his more recent work).

The SoPhilArt project, which took a year and a half to put together--"It's an after-work project in the evening," said Pfister--was successful enough to make her think about starting all over again to raise the funds and plan for another residency.

permanent link   libby 2:58 PM
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Posted by libby

Nightlife, night highways, neon, fluorescents, quick transport, film, video--these are hallmarks of the way we live today. A hundred years ago, we were in a different world--no cars or planes, yellowing gaslights and darkness at night, the stars visible, and time to contemplate and wonder (top, "I Can CU 2," oil, photograph, 15 x 57.5 inches).
demelas, anthony
Anthony DeMelas, whose paintings are in the main gallery at Pentimenti, makes art of the speed, the artifical light, the photography and film, even the smudgy quality of the printing process. A look at a DeMelas painting is like a tour through a fast-moving story.

DeMelas, who is local, has a couple of recent feathers in his cap, said Pentimenti's Christine Pfister. He's one of the artists in this year's New American Paintings and he created a commission for the Grammy Awards.

DeMelas, whose work includes wax and oil on paper as well as acrylic, uses the sculptural qualities of the media to create texture and visual landscape, sometimes. He also works on top of photographs some of the time (left, "Evolution," oil, photograph, 15 x 39 inches).

Sometimes, the scraped or dragged medium suggests an image taken from a fast-moving car--as well as the motion of the artist's hand, bringing back content to David Reed's reductive brush strokes. Often, there's a sense of multiple frames or spaces squeezed together to create a cinematic rush of shuffled memories.

DeMelas makes good use of the colors of artifical light and their contrast to darkened spaces.

These were the pieces that interested me most.

He also makes work with sexy figures and flowers, crazed textures, rhythmic patterns. These also had a sense of movement through a tale and time. But to me, these felt more worked over and interior--like a formal garden--and less about looking at the world around us.
blum, nancy
Also showing at Pentimenti are Nancy Blum sculptures and drawing, Isabel Bigelow monoprints and Kiki Gaffney drawings on mylar (right, Blum's ceramic flowers, variable dimensions).

Blum, who is a New York artist, is showing ceramic flowers (right), from a suite of work commissioned for an installation at the Seattle Airport. These flowers, which you may have seen before at Pentimenti, are stylized with a '50s decorative affect that at once bristles and suggests a factory-made process. In fact, however, each flower is unique.
bigelow, isabel
Bigelow is a painter, whose work is carried by galleries in New York (Sear-Peyton) and Tokyo. She is showing Asian-influenced reductive monoprints of forms suggested by nature (left, "Floating World," monoprint, 1/1, 25 x 17.5 inches).
gaffney, kiki








And Gaffney's oil rectangles and pencil botanical drawings on mylar evoke domestic spaces and concerns and life amid the layers of the past (right, "Botanical II," oil, pencil on mylar, 20 x 14.5 inches).

permanent link   libby 1:28 PM
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Posted by roberta

kirkland, jt

[This is the final post of my email conversation with JT Kirkland a self-taught artist and art blogger whose first solo exhibition was the occasion that triggered this Q&A. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. All images are details of Kirkland's pieces in his exhibit "Studies in Organic Minimalism" at University of Phoenix in Reston, Virginia, (through June 25).]

RF. Now, tell me about the blog, Thinking About Art. When did you start it? How did you pick the title? How often on average do you post? How are the numbers coming along? (stats I mean) Anything else about it you'd like to say?

JTK. I began TAA in June 2004. The reason I started was that I felt there was a lack of “common folk” art reviews. I wasn’t able to find reviews on the gallery shows I was interested in. While the DC art blogs were a help (DCArtNews and Modern Art Notes) the local papers were disappointing in their coverage. Instead of complaining, I decided to be a part of the solution and I started TAA.

The title comes from my intentions for the site. I have no formal art training and so I figured by writing my thoughts I would slowly but surely educate myself. With any luck some others might find value in it too. I titled it “Thinking About Art” because I wanted it to be clear what I was doing. I didn’t call it “Certainties About Art,” or “Things I Know About Art.” I wanted it to be clear that I was sharing my thoughts in a written forum.



Since June 2004, I’ve made 290 posts. I guess that averages out to about one post per day but recently I think I’ve done more. I love doing it so it makes sense. As for stats, it’s so hard to get accurate numbers. I do know that my visitors are growing every day. I guess since I began the site my average number of visitors each day is about 250-275. Since I got off to a slow start, I’m not sure how many I get each day now.

Blogs are fascinating creatures. I had no idea how anyone would find my blog. I didn’t know if anyone would read my site. After a few months it was clear that I was filling some void in the DC art scene. That feels great!

RF. Whose art do you like?

JTK. Well I could name almost every Minimalist. In particular I love the work of Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Fred Sandback and Robert Ryman. Outside of Minimalism I love the work of the AbEx’ers, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In the world of photography, I have a thing for Sally Mann and Andre Kertesz. It’s pretty easy to tell from this list that I love simplicity that packs a punch. I think these artists do that remarkably well.

RF. How many hours a day do you spend at your computer? Do you think that’s too much or just enough or not enough?



JTK. This is the question that will get me in trouble with artists! On average, I probably spend 10-12 hours a weekday on the computer. But 9-10 of those hours are due to my day job as a high tech consultant. So not only do I have to spend lots of time on the computer, but I also enjoy it. I’m an information junkie! And what better way to get information than the computer? Fortunately my brain works super fast so I can still write for my blog, write reviews for DCist.com, spend time with friends and make art.

RF. Tell me something about being an artist in DC. Is there a kind of
art community to tap into?

JTK. I’ve only been in DC for about 4 years so I’m not an expert on the DC art scene. And frankly I don’t have much to compare it to. But I find that the art scene here is vibrant. There are many young artists working at their trade. There’s a strong art blog community. The one complaint I hear most often is that there’s not enough buying of art in DC. It’s an affluent town but there just doesn’t seem to be a collector base that buys in DC. Signs suggest that it may be changing but it’s too early to tell.



I think the cost of real estate here hampers the art community. It’s so expensive to lease a space that we can’t have edgy, off-the-wall art spaces. Additionally, galleries have to be a bit more careful about what they show… it is business after all.

RF. What does JT stand for?

JTK. Nothing exciting… John Thomas. Why I go by J.T. is funny though. When I was in the second grade I started noticing that my Dad’s redneck friends (I’m from KY!) would say, “I gotta go to the john.” Of course they meant the bathroom. I hated that my name was associated with the toilet and opted for J.T. Ha!

RF. How long did it take you to make the body of work that's in this show? And do you have thoughts about the next project?

JTK. Thus far I have spent almost a year on this work. But I am far from done with it. My current solo show is titled “Studies in Organic Minimalism.” I stress “Studies.” These works have been experiments. I really feel that I could spend a couple more years perfecting this type of work. Do I continue with all-over patterns? Do I continue with outlines of shapes? I have a studio full of wood that has yet to be drilled… and I can’t wait to do it.



As for next projects, I definitely have things in mind. Without giving too much away, I want to work with wooden flooring, fencing and antiques. I’d also like to work with more exotic woods and eventually get into other natural materials such as marble.

I want to further blur the lines between craft and fine art. I want to continue using materials that have a life of their own… that have their own story. I want to be a part of that story.

permanent link   roberta 8:20 AM
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Posted by roberta

kirkland, jt

[ed. note: this is part two of an email Q&A I conducted with self-taught artist and DC-area blogger JT Kirkland, founder of Thinking About Art blog. See part one here. Part three follows next.]

RF. I love that you take wood, something organic, although in the case of lumber, it’s been denatured and turned into something else, then you apply patterns that evoke minimalism but also organic shapes and rhythms. What’s your relationship to wood?

JTK. You’re dead on! Boards of wood, such as the ones you might purchase at Home Depot or a lumber yard, are about as close as you can get to nature, but not nature. I’m not Andy Goldsworthy working outside. I’m not planting trees in a gallery. Quite simply, wood is very natural but full of beauty. (top image is "Switchback," and below is detail)

RF. are you a power tool person? Do you have a favorite lumber purveyor?

JTK. I’m definitely a power tool person! I couldn’t imagine drilling the number of holes I drill with anything but a powerful hand-held drill. The vast majority of my wood comes from Home Depot and most of my tools come from there or Sears. I like the idea of using materials that anyone has access to and that millions of people walk right by each day but don’t recognize the potential. When you walk by a tube of oil paint in an art store, you think of painting and nothing else. Wood from Home Depot is much different and alludes to all sorts of craft activities.



RF. tell a little about your wood selections -- poplar for some, maple for some,cedar...also, what’s the thickness of the pieces? there’s no third dimension listed on the price list...are they 1/4” or 1/2 or does it vary?

JTK. The selection of wood is easily the most critical step in my process. I don’t pick “maple” or “poplar” or whatever type of wood. I pick paintings. About once every two weeks I visit some of the nearby Home Depots and rummage through all of the stacked wood. I look and look until a piece of wood calls out to me as art. The grain and coloration has to speak to me. I don’t have any idea of what the hole pattern will be or what the size and orientation of the composition will be. But I know I want to work with that piece of wood. It can be maple, poplar, or cedar… it just has to work. Frequently the wood I choose is “reject” wood, and what I mean by that is that your typical furniture maker or woodworker would never use the wood I pick. The grain is too colorful or “ugly.” Think of the furniture around you… how noticeable is the grain?

In terms of thickness, the wood itself is standard thickness. However, I mount the pieces on slats which can be up to 1” thick. I love how this pushes the work off the wall and gives it a great presence. It makes the piece become an object… an artifact.

RF. Do you know how to sew? Because the repetition of hole-making coupled with the patterns you make -- which carry over among several pieces of wood -- remind me embroidery or stichery. So that the pieces become quilts of a sort.



JTK. I don’t know how to sew but this observation is key! The connection to quilts is that the stitching joins the pieces of the quilt into one overall work. On a piece with 3 panels I see 6 works of art. Let me explain. You have 3 individual panels that operate as individual pieces of art. Each panel could be considered individually. Then you have the 3 pieces of wood considered as one work of art, separate from the holes. I then see the holes which would be on the 3 panels. I think you can look at just the holes across the 3 boards as one piece. And last but not least is the overall work: 3 panels of wood and holes. (image above is "Woven" and below is detail)

RF. The sizes are idiosyncratic. are the pieces dictated by a certain
idea about size?


JTK. The sizes of my work very often mimic typical canvas sizes and proportions. It’s the size, proportion and mounting on the wall that drives home the idea of painting. I think by placing the work anywhere else (the floor as one curator suggested I do), it immediately becomes sculpture and loses the connection to painting and drawing. I like that the size and composition keep the possibilities open as to what it can be.

Rf. i can’t tell what the finish is on them. are they stained and oiled?
and how are they affixed to the wall?

JTK. My work does not use stains or oils. I’ve experimented with stain but found that it hid the grain too much and made the wood artificial. And it wasn’t necessary… natural is where it’s at. About half the pieces have no finish at all. The other half have a clear lacquer on them. I’ll put lacquer on the work only if it enhances the grain. On some types of wood (Fiddleback Maple, for example), the lacquer really makes the wood pop. But it doesn’t hide the grain… and that’s critical. Stain often takes the character from the wood, and obviously we can’t have that in my work. Furniture making? Maybe. But not my work.

RF. what size drill bit do you use?

JTK. I have 15 different sizes of drill bits that I can use. This allows for greater flexibility in the hole pattern and effect.

RF. I think it’s hysterical that you include “Holes” in your list of materials on the price list for the show...

JTK. I’ve gotten many questions about including “holes” in the list of materials. The reason is twofold. 1) In jpegs it is tough to tell that they are holes and not painted circles. 2) I really believe it’s a medium, even if that idea is strange. It’s a space… nothing. But it has a definite presence. It does work. If I painted the circles with oil paint, no one would have a problem with me listing oil paint. But in this case, the holes have a greater impact than oil paint would and deserves to be called out.



Furthermore, the holes are key in driving home the idea of depth. It’s very literal. The other depth is seen in the grain. On the sides of my pieces you can see that the grain moves “through” the wood. The color and lines can be seen on the other side of the board. Though it appears to exist on the surface, the material is truly made of the color and grain. This idea sort of calls to the Color Field painters who tried to make the color and canvas act as one thing. Wood does it naturally. (image is "Valley" and below is detail)

RF. I haven’t seen them in person but my impression is that the space in between the planks feels like a gash in the whole --
almost like a wound, a symbolc sundering of what should be a unity.

JTK. In terms of violence, while I don’t see it or think about it in the gaps, I do think about it in the holes. It’s such a violent process to cut and drill through the wood. It’s all about strength in making the work. But with each step of the process it calms down. I use a belt sander to smooth the wood. I then use a block sander. Then just sandpaper and my hand. Lastly I wipe the work down with a tack cloth. I go to great extremes to make the work look safe and clean… but it’s anything but.

RF. Do you think of these as stripe paintings?...the wood grain is painty and the black shadows are stripey.



JTK. Ah, you touch on it here. First and foremost I consider my work to be painting. Sure, there’s no oil or acrylic paint. But whatever is in the wood and produces the color in the grain is paint to me. So in essence I consider this found painting… found in nature. Secondly, I think there’s clearly some sculpture in the work. And lastly, there’s a bit of drawing involved (my work was recently included in a National Drawing show). I just can’t fit my work into any particular genre… it’s all of the above.

I’ve never thought of my work as stripe paintings, but the black shadows in the gaps between the pieces play a big role in the compositions. They are a big part of the composition and breaking the image up. The puts a big reliance on the holes to re-unite the piece… as if the arrangement of wood tore it apart and the holes put it back together again. I also think the shadows provide a background that makes the wood pop off the wall. It gives the work added depth… like graphic designers use with text that has the shadow behind it.

permanent link   roberta 7:51 AM
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Posted by libby

New York and a couple of Philadelphia shows I saw last week will just have to wait their turn, behind the big-name out-of-town team of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, whose installation "Pandemonium" in Cell Block 7 at Eastern State Penitentiary opened Thursday night(image, Cardiff and her husband, Miller, working on "Pandemonium" in situ).
cardiff, janet

Little miss punctual was there on the stroke of 10, as usual, meaning I was the first to arrive, so I got the full attention of exhibit curator Julie Courtney and an ebullient Sean Kelley, the press officer for the penitentiary. The early morning light streaming through the temporary skylights into the cell block was spectacular, as Miller and Titus Maderlechner worked feverishly to get everything up and running. (Courtney said that Maderlechner was the "tone man.")"The humidity is a problem," Courtney said, explaining the last minute scramble to retune (left, the light in the cell block, along with Maderlechner left and Miller right talking to Cardiff, invisible except for her sneakers and jeans).
miller, george bures
The men were working on the computer program, which triggers the solenoids that control each of the 120 tapping devices in 120 cells, connected by six miles of wire. With a percussion instrument in each cell, the cells become sound chambers and the cell block becomes a giant musical instrument--the largest in the world, said Courtney (right, the keyboard from the computer).

A walk through the cell block revealed the local sounds in each cell in the context of the overall sound, which built to an explosive ending, the pattern reminding me of how July 4 fireworks build to the grand finale. It wasn't hard to imagine a story line for the noises--enforced marches, pounding heartbeats, tapped communications and beaten frustrations (left, one of the instruments in a cell--a couple of oil drums and a drum stick between them).

Courtney said that with the instruments in the cellblocks, it makes it seem that there are people in the cells, banging.

The Cardiff/Miller piece is more martial and thundering than the previous musical installation at the penitentiary by Timothy Nohe, "142 Ways to Mark Time" (see post). The sounds of Nohe's reflective piece were taped on multiple loops and timed by a computer to orchestrate randomly, the range of noises including glass breaking, water dripping and footsteps--an imagining of what a prisoner would hear.

In Cellblock 7, Courtney said, architect John Havilland set back the catwalks, so the light would farther down into the corridor and cells on the lower level (right, another instrument, with drum stick beating on a chest from the prison cell; other instruments used pipes and other material found in the cells).

"Pandemonium" lasts 15 minutes with a 30 second break between the end and the beginning, said Cardiff, after walking away from Miller and Maderlechner. She didn't seem to be needed during this phase of the preparation. She and Miller, who were both born in Canada, now live and work in Berlin.

Maderlechner also took a moment's break from his feverish activity to talk. He said he was there for a little computer help. He also did the CD recording, which will come with the catalog. Courtney added that Richard Torchia wrote the catalog. It's not clear to me whether the CD will be available on its own.

Compared to Cardiff walks, which include sound, words, stories and visual elements from the past and the present and the pretend, this piece seemed relatively simple, and more like a music piece than an art piece --in short, more Miller than Cardiff (see Roberta's post and my post on Cardiff's "Her Long Black Hair," a walk through Central Park). Courtney said that as soon as she approach Cardiff about a piece at Eastern State, Cardiff declared that it wouldn't be a walk, but something more like her "Forty-Part Motet" at P.S. 1., which incorporated the entirety of Spem in Alium by 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis in a choral surround-sound experience, the noise and conversations of the gathering musicians as much a musical contribution as the Tallis motet (left, a rare visual element in "Pandemonium," a pair of old boots).

"Pandemonium" is also surround sound, and it's lovely in its own right. But as is the way with all commissions, you can't always get what you want, and Philadelphia may have thought it was buying a Janet Cardiff/George Burres Miller piece when in fact it got a George Bures Miller/Janet Cardiff piece.

"Pandemonium" is the second installation at Eastern State organized by Philadelphia-based independent curator Courtney. She co-curated the first group of 14 art installations there--"Prison Sentences: The Prison as Site/The Prison as Subject," a spectacular opening of the prison to public attention in 1995 (right, another view in the prison courtyard).

permanent link   libby 10:47 PM
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