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Posted by roberta

This just in from Rick de Coyte at Silicon Gallery.

Calling all sci-artists this is definitely for you. Spend 28 hours inside Franklin Institute making a piece of sci-art, and get a $1000 stipend for materials. Cots provided, byo pyjamas.

Six artists or artist teams will be chosen. You must apply by June 22 with a project idea (200 words) and names of team members*, a resume and a url to your website showing your previous work. DeCoyte is the juror. Here's the Franklin Institute link to the application specs and more information about the science exhibit this effort is linked with. And here's more from the official press announcement:

Sir Isaac's Loft - Where Art & Physics Collide

Dear Artists and Scientists,

In celebration of the opening of the new exhibit, Sir Isaac's Loft:
Where Art and Physics Collide, The Franklin Institute is hosting Sir Isaac's 28-Hour Sci/Art Jam. Six Sir Isaac's Sci/Art Jam grant recipients will be given a thousand dollars and 28 hours to create art based on one of the themes represented in Sir Isaac's Loft/. The pieces will be created in The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial where visitors can watch the creative process in action.

The clock on Sir Isaac's 28-Hour Sci/Art Jam will start ticking at 11:00AM on July 15 and stop ticking at 3:00PM on July 16. The artists will then share with visitors what they were able to create in the time allotted.

The six themes in Sir Isaac's Loft are:

Changing The Light: Changing the light changes what you see.
Chain Reactions: Chain reactions need a push to get started and then keep going.
Combining Motions: Combining simple motions creates complex patterns.
Physics Feats Of Strength: Knowing physics allows you to do things that you could not before.
Energy Transfer: Energy can be transferred from one thing to another or from one form to another.
Illusions: Artists use science to fool with your brain

*[Ed. note: I'm no sci-artist but I'm a good art chronicler and would be happy to sign on to a team interested in a little artblog chronicling of their project. Lemme know.]

permanent link   roberta 9:19 AM
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Posted by roberta

By now you may have heard through the email grapevine about the one day seminar July 22 organized by Melissa Franklin of Pew Fellowships in the Arts and Beth Feldman Brandt of Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation.

The LINC-affiliated event (Leveraging Investments in Creativity) is a brainstorming session in which artists will be able to offer suggestions on making life better for all practicing artists here in Philadlphia. (LINC's a ten-year, nation-wide do-good project.)
LINC Philadelphia
Seating is limited so sign up early. Here's the page with more info about the day long program and with instructions on registering (you can do it by email or snail mail).

Franklin and Brandt will take the results of all the great ideas generated at the seminar and organize them into one grand project proposal for which they'll seek LINC money and local matching funds (in the neighborhood of $200,000). Now that's money that could have impact.

permanent link   roberta 8:23 AM
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Posted by libby

Last time I stopped at Afif Gallery in January, owner Liz Afif-Zane was yearning for company in her neighborhood--more galleries and commerce. Since then, she has gotten a full-time job designing rugs, but she also has gotten a terrific neighbor, Gallery 339, a block and a half away, and business on her block of South Street also is picking up. But she's got the job, so she's trying to figure out how to keep the gallery open more hours than at present. But Friday (that's tomorrow, June 10) is opening night, which means the gallery will be open for business. Otherwise, call her to make an appointment to see this show, which is worth a visit.
bicht, emily
The main space has a solo exibit by Emily Bicht. Bicht, who lives in New York but has ties to Moore College, where she went to school, mines images of the happy housewife inspired by 1950s advertising. Bicht's happy housewife reminds me of killer mom Kathy Baker in Boston Public. Amid her sharp knives and ironing boards, inside her patterned dress, there's a would-be predator. She's June Cleaver with a cleaver (left top, "Cherries").

Her forced smile is her parachute and the land she has alit in is wallpaper-patterned so she's pressed up against the front of the painting in a claustrophobic non-space. Even the floors she's cleaning are vertical flat patterns. The flowers are camouflage for what is in her heart, which is scheming for survival in this alien world. In some of the paintings, she's virtually part of the wallpaper, a flat human patterned shape in her patterned dress with her patterned apron (right, "Thin Flank").

The patterns in these paintings are anti-pattern-and-decoration, armed for battle, and intense, made of knives and human hearts mixed with valentine hearts. They have '50s color schemes and buzzy agitation. One of the wallpaper patters reminds me of some wallpaper my mother picked for the kitchen back in the '50s. The cherries galore quickly beat her down and irritated her day in and day out for the next 10 years.

As for the woman, she's got the exaggerated 50s, sexualized body, and that's part of the formula for the happy housewife. By the way, she herself is the model for her paper-doll cutie who reappears in all the paintings except in my very favorite piece--perhaps a study for another piece--an image of a modern-day hottie of the male persuasion, tattoos and all, making a sexual move on the ironing board. It was the funniest and freshest piece of all, with a touch of Japanese warrior in the pose(left, "Male Irons").

Afif also has a juried group show in the back room, "Hindsight." The 11 artists drawn from across the county include local artist Ellie Brown. A wonderful painting by John DenHouter, "Homecoming" (right) shows a wheatfield and multiple goal posts sticking up like telephone poles under a vast blue sky. It's a poem to the endless prairie merely decorated by agriculture and football culture, and the heightened colors suggest mythmaking in storybook land.
denhouter, john
Shannon Robinson's "Glenda" (left), a hug-object with doll legs as a floral pillow or sofa as a sprouting lima bean as a really scary one-eyed mutant looks nothing like the good witch Glenda from the Wizard of Oz. It seems to come out of the cartoon tradition, a feminine monster in the ToysRUs aisle where girly dolls meet boyish action-figure dolls.
robinson, shannon
Marilyn Murphy's graphite drawings of retro-looking people in surreal, unlikely activities with unlikely Frankenstein equipment also were standouts. Even with noir lighting, the film angles and lab coats, the odd science seems not so much threatening as loopy and ritualistic (right, "Changing Old Patterns").
murphy, marilyn
Local artist Brown has added girls and lace and Japanese marks to a retro text book, "Research Ideas for Young Scientists" (left). "I was thinking about how in science Asian women have taken more steps towards progress and leveling the field with men than other ethnicities," she wrote in an email. The marks, like science, are Greek to most girls--but not to these Japanese school girls whom Brown added. The book, with its retro look, talks to Murphy's drawings and to Bicht's work in the front room.
brown, ellie
By the way, Brown also has work in "Philadelphia Cheek," the show of young artists opening tomorrow at Seraphin Gallery, and she will be showing work at InLiquid's Art for Cash Poor art sale Saturday (see post for more info).

Almost all the work in this group show interested me. The other artists are
Donna Quinn, John Hyde, Steve D’Angelo, Elizabeth Bisbing, Colleen Toledano, Kay Campbell, and Elaine Ricklin. So if you miss the opening, call and visit.

permanent link   libby 1:03 PM
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Posted by roberta

I pick up mail at the Weekly oh, say, once a month. So occasionally I get news items late. But some news is great to get no matter how late arriving. Like the press release from Skowhegan dated May 12 announcing the class of 2005, a group of 65 artists chosen from 1,427 applications -- the biggest applicant pool ever (and the smallest acceptance rate -- five percent).

The elite 65, I am happy to say, includes seven artists who have or had Philly connections. Some I know, or know of, and some I'm not familiar with. Here's the Philly seven:

Rachel Frank, Ana Hernandez, Isaac Lin, Jennifer Macdonald, Binod Shrestha, Jessica Slaven and Jina Valentine

Congratulations to all!

The Skowhegan program is a 9-week artists' residency in Skowhegan, Maine. The 2005 artists were selected by this summer's faculty members Ellen Gallagher, Sarah McEneaney (another Philadelphia connection), Oliver Herring and Maria Elena Gonzalez working with members of the Board of Governors including Janine Antoni, Emma Amos, Beverly Semmes, Daniel Bozhkov, Lois Dodd, Joyce Kozloff and Whitfield Lovell.

permanent link   roberta 8:20 AM
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Posted by roberta

I met Trudy Kraft a couple years ago when she had me in for a studio visit. I was writing an essay about her work and since the work involves a lot of process I wanted to hear about it first hand in the studio and get stepped through the series of events that led to a piece. (image is installation shot of Kraft's show at Gross McCleaf Gallery, up til June 13)


Kraft, a charming, intelligent and hard-working artist makes her magic in a 3rd floor studio in her house. It's a snug attic aerie with views of the treetops and lots of light. The artist's finished work, most of it quite large (I'm talking 4 ft. tall by 3 ft. wide) and all of it on paper was stacked neatly, some pieces framed, some unframed, and placed to one side. See her website for biography and more images. (image left is one of three panels called "Invocation" that remind me of black lace, refined, mysterious and sex. This is "Invocation 053" and right is a detail)


The work in progress was all over the place -- on the walls and on the tables, for the artist works more than one piece at a time and surrounds herself with many paintings allowing patterns and motifs to flow between one and the other.


Kraft's pieces begin with large motifs laid on in washes of color. Overall, the works' designs imply windows, lace, carpets, tapestries. What makes them unique is the incredible embellishment of the underlying pattern with a repertoire of dots and lines and more washes of color and areas of masking fluid which she puts on and takes off repeatedly to reveal surfaces underneath. The finished piece is a riot of microcosmic patterning, all hand-made, sitting on a larger, macro-cosmic design. Getting lost in the micro- and macro-cosmos of Kraft's work is a dizzying pleasure that also gives your cones and rods a workout. (image is "Invocation 052" )


Here's what I wrote about Kraft's art in that essay, and it's true of her work today in its current installation at Gross McCleaf Gallery as it was when I saw it in the artist's studio. (image is "Invocation 051")

Trudy Kraft's works on paper are songs in praise of cosmic interconnectedness. Her universal signs and symbols -- radiant hemispheres, leaves, dots, and spirals -- point beyond themselves. Her saturated reds, greens, yellows and blues provide long, satisfying drinks of color. Kraft orchestrates symphonies to the wonders of life -- its micro and macro excellence, its unbelievable design, its mystery.

Kraft, a Texas native who lives in Haverford with her family, has had far too little exposure in the Philadelphia area, something that mystified me in 2003 when I first encountered the work. I didn't understand why she wasn't on my radar. While she had been in numerous group exhibits in the region and was in fact a Pew finalist in 1993, she was underrepresented here for what is gorgeous, ambitious work. (image is "Nightlife 051" and below is detail)

Last year, Kraft had a solo exhibit at Show of Hands, a craft boutique with a gallery space. Here's my PW review of that show and a thumbnail sketch I posted here on the blog.


With her first exhibit at Gross McCleaf (and several of the works sold when I stopped by shortly after the opening) Kraft's emerged onto the radar at last. I'm so glad to see it. The current installation in the gallery's large, well-lit back space plays up the works' elegance and its appeal.
kraft, trudy

permanent link   roberta 7:57 AM
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Posted by libby

On a perfect June morning, parents and the children of Spruance Elementary School in Northeast Philadelphia gathered in the school yard to dedicate an exuberant mural created by artist Eliseo Silva with their help (top, Silva's "Coming to America, Making it Better," with real-life ribbon slicing across, awaiting the ceremonial cutting).
silva, eliseo


The mural is one of 20 created this year, the first part of a five-year joint project of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and the School District of Philadelphia. At Spruance, the students and some parents and the faculty worked on the mural during school and after school, according to Rochelle Jacobs, one of the teachers who participated in the school's mural committee.
spruance elementary school


One of the first families to arrive for the festivities were the Luroes, there because Brittany Luroe, who is 14 and in 8th grade, designed one of the 100 stars students created for the mural. She was also one of the stars of the day, scheduled to sing a solo during the ceremonies. So what do you think of the mural, Brittany? "It's beautiful," she said. "...all vibrant and everything."

There's plenty to like in this mural, which has jerseys from Donovan McNabb and Alan Iverson as well as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a hand covered with henna patterns, a Muslim-looking girl in a kerchief, African masks and carved figures, a woman in a samba costume, a Chinese dragon, a yin and yang, and lots lots more.

Then the students started arriving, most of them sitting on the tarmac in front of the mural, creating a sea of red. The school principal, Betty Klear, began. "We have a visual reminder for years to come of our diversity, of all we've done.".

Then Assistant Principal Frank Dunn led the pledge of allegiance.

He asked, "How many people in the audience were born someplace else than America?" A large number of hands shot up from the crowd dressed in their uniform red shirts. When he asked how many had parents who were born elsewhere, it seemed like nearly everyone raised their hands (left). He told the children about his first experience coming to school and not speaking English, and spoke of the worth of each child and "the potential you have to make it better."

The name of the mural is "Coming to America, Making it Better."

Luroe and several other students sang spirited solos of "We are the World," quickly recovering their composure when the microphone failed them. Then all the children who were gathered in front of the mural joined in the chorus, led by a smiling Leah Hopkins, while parents beamed and wiped away a tear or two (image, the soloists, including Luroe, fourth from the right, and Hopkins in green dress in front).

Dr. Alisha Greenberg, an art teacher at the school, spoke of how the different cultures in the school make life interesting, and that the mural would serve as a daily reminder of that diversity. She spoke of how the children researched their ancestry, and announced certificates for children who participated by contributing stars or painting.

After another art teacher spoke, the man-of-the-day addressed the crowd.

"Raise your hand if you want to be an artist someday," Silva said. A large troupe of the youngest students stretched their arms to the sky.

Describing his experience with the students he said, "The first day, I knew I was in a room full of geniuses. I knew I had more to learn from them than they could [learn from] me."

He said the mural was made with 100 gallons of paint and 100 parachute cloths covering 2,400 square feet of wall (left, Silva before the ceremony began).

Silva was delighted by his experience at Spruance. "It was my first opportunity to shape the future" by teaching children. He said the mural showed the spirit, the energy and the force of art, and that the children were the inspiration for the mural.

Two French-speaking children from the ESL (English as a Second Language) program, one from Benin and one from Haiti, recited a poem, "I too" by Langston Hughes.

A group of school dignitaries, including the artist, then cut the ribbon (right, the ribbon cutting).

Then Deborah Zuchman, the project coordinator for the collaboration between the School District and the Mural Arts Program, talked about how the children learned the process of making art--facing the blank wall, coming up with the ideas that would go into the work, and then making decisions. The students also kept a sketchbook journal for the project, and one of those sketchbooks won an award.

A neighborhood Wawa donated refreshments for after the ceremony.

But first students, faculty and others came up to congratulate and thank Silva for his splendid work. He looked grand dressed up in his traditional Phillipine embroidered shirt, just the right touch for a mural about diversity and immigration and moving to a better life.

He said this was his eighth mural in Philadelphia, and he has done 44 murals in places stretching from California and Seattle to Maine. He was excited to have had the chance to be inside a classroom as part of the regular teaching program. He said it made a big difference in both his experience and the experience of the children working with him.

Then he talked a little about the mural. The space in it stretches from the broken chains at the foot of the Statue of Liberty across the oceans, where two parents enter the New World, a sort of magical realism and surrealism powering the imagery in the painting. All of the earth-bound events take place on the back of an eagle, hard to pick out at first, but then unmistakable.

The second theme involves dismantling a World War II bomber to create a better, peaceful life. Propellers become energy windmills and also propel through the sky a flying dog with a man on his back. The skin of the plane becomes the rowhouse rooftops.

Silva said he thought it was interesting and wonderful that the students, so many of whom are Asian, overwhelmingly selected Rosa Parks as the perfect American. He took that as a sign of social progress toward equality for all.

The ceremony could have taken place in any American public school anywhere in the country. And the children looked beautiful and full of life and pride--perfect Americans.

permanent link   libby 2:44 PM
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Posted by roberta

My review of what's at Locks Gallery is in today's paper. Here. To wit, the gallery has video installations -- two of them! That's the big news.
campus, peter
And there's a great show of Ray Metzger's black and white photographs from the 1960s and '70. Noirish shots of Philadelphia and beach scenes that don't have today's de rigeour groomed sand and happy people.

The folks in Metzger's beach scenes (like the one above) are sleeping on blankets and looking like they're part of the animal kingdom just wearing clothes. And the way Metzger paints with neon at night (like in the image left showing what must be cars in a parking garage) is lovely and makes the city mysterious and delightful.
metzger, ray

The video installations by Peter Campus and Jennifer Steinkamp are pretty great. Mostly, they're notable for being there in the town's blue chip gallery where video has not been shown before that I know of.

(image is still from Campus's 8-channel video projection at Locks.)
steinkamp, jennifer
Locks's Jeremiah Misfeldt told me that two of our town's premier video artists, Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, took a seminar from Campus at one time (the artist teaches at NYU). So there's another Philly-New York video connection.


Steinkamp, a Los Angeles media artist, is a digital wizard and the projection here of a hanging curtain of flowers is great for its sly allusions to strands of DNA and other cyber-science wizardry. The piece, called "Cleopatra" (shown left) goes way beyond flowers.
meyers, linn
Here's how Misfeldt described the piece in an email

"3D modeled computer generated imagery - plant forms modeled and rendered using software customized by the artist - movement much like an undulating "curtain" of vines with flowers - no soundtrack - lovely."

I just checked and Misfeldt told me that the second Steinkamp video, "Dance Hall Girl" is being installed today and will be ready for viewing tomorrow.

Metzger and Steinkamp are up through June 30. The Campus is up through June 23.

Gallery Joe

In the Editors Picks in the listings is my review of Linn Meyers and Sabeen Raja's two-person show at the Gallery. Here.

The two bodies of work are inspiring for their virtuoso craftsmanship. And Raja's subject matter, the subversion of Indian miniature painting with social commentary about gender and racial politics, is amazing. Meyers' drawings on mylar of curtains and cubes speak of magic and shifting layers of reality and seem very appropriate for our slippery electronically-mediated world. (image is one of Raja's pieces from the current show)

Libby also wrote about this work in her post.

Please note: If you read this piece in the printed paper version you will see that I refer to Raja as a "he." This is a mistake made by the editors who assumed the artist was a man and changed my words and didn't tell me or check with the gallery. Online, happily, this has been corrected but in the real world it's an embarrassing mistake. My humble apologies to Ms. Raja, whose work in fact deals with gender issues. Ironic.
raja, sabeen

permanent link   roberta 1:08 PM
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Posted by libby

Post by Colette Copeland in collaboration with Gregory Wolmart
allyn, anita
How do the objects we consume signify our relationship to identity, self and culture? What role does color play in our habits as consumers of products and information, and to what degree does advertising and product marketing influence these habits? For that matter, how is it that we organize objects so that they become meaningful to us? These are some of the questions I was pondering (with my friend Gregory), while walking through Anita Allyn's installation entitled, "Life Catalog--Color Systems" on exhibit at Carbon 14 Gallery through the end of June (right and below, details of Allyn's installation).

150 lush digital prints line the gallery's side walls with a computer station projecting the archived data base on the back wall. The images are arranged by color, simulating a computerized color wheel--starting with white, transitioning into yelow, orange and red on the first wall, then continuing with pink, blue, green, brown and ending with black on the second wall. Allyn meticulously photographed each of her possessions, listing them by category on a web database. For the exhibit, she printed digital images from the database. Stripped of their original context, each object floats isolated in white space, frameless against the white wall. Playing with scale and juxtaposition, Allyn provides viewers with endless opportunities to create narratives and make meaning from their own associations with various objects. One of the things that struck me about the installation is the tension created by the juxtaposition of objects of learning vs. objects of pleasure. Feathered boas and spiked heels share the wall with books on feminist and queer theory.

As a child, Allyn moved constantly from place to place. Consequently, she had few possessions growing up. She recognizes her desire to collect and categorize as a way to index her sense of place. The objects house memories and stories of her experiences. They speak to the relationship between memory and materialism.

I am reminded of two books on color--Derek Jarman's "Chroma" and David Batchelor's "Chromophobia". Jarman wrote "Chroma" from his hospital bed, while going blind from AIDS. Rupturing colors' traditional symbolism, Jarman wrote about the confluence of color with his experiences and relationships. For Jarman, yellow was not a color of sunshine and happiness, but associated with piss and jaundice. Batchelor's book "Chromophobia" references the inherent prejudice and racism in how color is used in advertising and film. Allyn's inquiry into color subtlely frames some of the arguments that both Jarman and Batchelor employ in their essays.

Allyn's work calls into question some of the assumptions we have about color, such as how white is used as a symbol of status, minimalism and purity. On a less intellectual level, I wondered why there were not any green CD's? Is this because Allyn doesn't like the particular music with green labels? Or don't record companies use green? Why doesn't Glad make pink or purple garbage bags? Does this have to do market research on consumer buying habits or is it a matter of economy? Why was I so attracted to the red images/objects? Is it because psychologically they speak of passion and desire?

Many contemporary artists critique consumer culture. It is an easy target. Allyn's work goes beyond a mere critique, by acknowledging both our obsessive and complicated relationship to our possessions and the role they play in forming our identity and place in the collective community and culture.

--Post by video artist Colette Copeland, who teaches at UArts and UPenn, in collaboration with Gregory Wolmart, PhD candidate in English at UPenn

permanent link   libby 10:58 AM
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Posted by libby

Hyder Gallery is changing its name to Project Gallery. Helen Hyder mentioned that when the gallery goes to out-of-town art fairs, people assume the gallery is a vanity gallery because of the name. Hence the name change. By the way, Paul Santoleri has a show there this month, plus there's a group show to celebrate the gallery's first year. I didn't get to last month's show until the very end of the month, and by time I got around to thinking about writing something, it was gone (left, Sanoleri's "Fire in the Village").
santoleri, paul
The other interesting thing Hyder mentioned to me was that artists in South America generally don't paint isolated in studios but rather work in groups. This info came up because the show included an exhibit of drawings from Venezuela from a group of artists calling themselves Circulo de Dibujo who get together regularly to paint (right, one of the paintings from the Circulo, Guillermo Ferrer's "Arboleda I," a very sexy rainforest tree).
ferrer, guillermo
Galleries gone

On Friday we stood before the papered over windows at Union 237 talking to a young man guarding the door. He confirmed what the notes on the windows said--that the gallery was closing. I for one am sad about this, because it took street artists seriously and gave them a gorgeous space to show off their wares. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the gallery still wasn't able to give that work the credibility it needed to attract collectors.

We heard several months ago from an artist who exhibited at Pringle that it was going out of business. But then it didn't. But now it has. I guess I didn't feel as wedded to this gallery because it trod the tried and true, showing work from commercially successful artists from around the world. Nonetheless, more galleries is better than fewer galleries. I'm sorry to see it is gone.

And now the good news...
And over on Race Street on the western edge of Old City's galleries, Hurong Lou Gallery opened in May with highly crafted, high-end sculpture. In addition to the InLiquid web page link, I'm also adding this link to their own Web page, which is too cute for its own good--or to put it another way, form defeated function. It's so small I can't read it. But it sure is sweet. Check it out.

permanent link   libby 10:03 AM
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Posted by libby

An email from Joy Feasley

feasley, joy

Your remarks about camp were right on although I admit it wasn't completely intentional, more well "just felt" [pun intended] (see post here on Feasley's installation at Temple Gallery with Paul Swenbeck and Kait Midgett; the felt star under discussion is in image to right).

Here is a highlighted excerpt from an old artist's statement of mine:
swenbeck, paul
I found a copy of the Campfire Girls Handbook at the Philadelphia Free Library. I was in Campfire Girls for years in the '70s and hadn’t thought about since. As I read through the book, I was amazed by the similarities between my artwork and the photographs in the book. For years, I have been making drawings of girls involved in miscellaneous outdoor activities--chopping wood, cheerleading, meditating. The handbook showed girls in almost identical age and in similar activities; canoeing, hiking, building fires, singing, staring up at the sky . I realized the Campfire Girls are resourceful, enigmatic, and ... weird.
midgett, kait
Resourceful: We made a camp stove out of a #10 can and homemade “Sterno” from curled cardboard set into a tuna can filled with paraffin. [Made the world’s best bacon, egg, and cheese on English muffin, c.1976]

Enigmatic: The handbook suggests bringing plenty of batteries to camp as many a flashlight has died exploring the “holes” of an outhouse.

Weird: Another passage suggested the girls lie on their backs, look up at the sky and imagine the clouds as land and the sky as sea.

Pretty trippy stuff for 9-year olds. Pretty and trippy. Awful and cute.
Back to the paintings, well, I still love camping . They’re about being in the woods, listening to the trees, mapping out the stars, exploring nature, and being a kid.

One clarification on your review the show:
You mention Kait as the casting expert, which she is, but all the ceramics are hand built by Paul using terracotta and Egyptian paste. Kait contributed the two dioramas inside the cases, both are of my sister's house in Port Jervis, NY. Kait carved and sculpted these to the smallest detail.

...The show...was 4 years in the making!
Joy

--Joy Feasley is a Philadelphia-based artist

permanent link   libby 4:26 PM
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Posted by roberta

DOUGLAS FOGLE APPOINTED CURATOR OF CONTEMPORARY ART AT CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART said the press release I got last night from the Carnegie Museum. What? Where's Laura Hoptman, who did the last Carnegie International? I thought she was Curator of Contemporary Art.

Hoptman's on to unspecified new things. The press release doesn't mention where she'll be after the summer. The world of museum curating is a restless place and the Carnegie International seems to be a springboard. The last Carnegie International (1999/2000) was organized by Madeleine Grynsztejn and she pretty quickly left Pittsburgh to be senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco MoMA. Hmmm, San Francisco or Pittsburgh. I wonder how that figures in to curating decisions.

Quoting from the CM release:

Fogle will organize the 55th Carnegie International, which will open in May 2008. Fogle, who is currently curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, will assume his duties summer, 2005....

Fogle began his association with Walker Art Center in 1994 as a visual arts intern. In 1995, he was promoted to curatorial assistant, then assistant curator in 1997, associate curator in 2000, and curator in 2003....

Fogle received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1986; he began his doctoral studies in the history of consciousness with an emphasis on contemporary visual culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1987 and advanced to candidacy in 1991. He was a lecturer in the Art History Board at the museum from 1992-1994. Fogle has also written for several exhibition catalogues and journals such as Artforum, frieze, Flash Art, and Parkett.

Fogle succeeds Laura Hoptman as the museum’s contemporary art curator.

So this morning I noticed at artforum that not only is Fogle leaving the Walker for the Carnegie but Walker's Chief Curator Richard Flood is leaving the Walker for the New Museum. Here's the artforum link to the story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

And here's the lead of that story:

Walker Art Center's deputy director and a top curator said Friday that they are quitting for new jobs in New York and Pittsburgh. Their departures, effective later this summer, are part of a brain drain that leaves the contemporary art museum with four key posts to fill less than two months after opening a $70 million addition for which it is still raising money.

Richard Flood, 62, the Walker's deputy director and chief curator, will be chief curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York starting in September. Curator Douglas Fogle, 41, will become curator of contemporary art and organizer of international expositions at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art in August.

Things are highly fluid in the museum world, I'd say. And today, of course, the Philadelphia Museum of Art hits the front page with a story about a $500 million expansion plan...including, and here's the news all you art lovers, a 400-car underground parking garage. Can we say new revenue stream everyone? Read the Inquirer story by Peter Dobrin and Inga Saffron.

permanent link   roberta 8:51 AM
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Posted by libby

Roberta's take on our Friday wanderings seems just about right. The Joy Feasley-Kait Midgett-Paul Swenbeck installation at Temple Gallery, "Summer Friends With New Roses," had the unlikely affect of the crafts cabin at an Adirondack summer camp. A giant star covered with felt reminded me of the felt humpty-dumpty doll I made when I was a kid at camp, blanket stitched together, the face glued on (top, a Feasley painting of the wilds of her imagination).
feasley, joy
A bench that opened to reveal side-by-side potty buckets (left), from Swenbeck, added to the
rusticity and the humor. All in all, as an installation, the high-energy exhibit spun with a kind of centripital sense of falling apart at the same time as a centrifugal consistency of mood held the whole thing together.
midgett, kait
Funny cast ceramic objects looking like a cross between teeth and tubers (designs by Swenbeck)lurked on the hokey, Moderne 1950s shelves, that seemed to define the strata of our world with an above-and-below ground kind of feel, a multi-level universe with lurking life forms. Midgett is the casting expert (06/07/05--see correction on this here for info on Midgett's contribution to this installation).
swenbeck, paul
The paintings (from Feasley) continued with the camping theme--the great outdoors and also the hints of the universe. My favorite was of an Eskimo (what is the right word here? Native American?) using a yellow measuring tape to measure the infinity of a crystaline sky which may in fact be the crystaline interior of an igloo (left). The paintings walked the line between loopy and kitschy and sublime--just like camp. (There will be an artist's talk at the gallery June 21 at 6 p.m., and the show runs until July 22.)


On our way to Vox Populi, we stopped at Black Floor Gallery (see Roberta's post on the art), a two-floor factory loft walk-up. I took a picture of the stairwell, which Roberta said reminded her of the stairs at the old Vox Populi space on 2nd Street. Either way, it was a climb with the charms of roughing it, urban style.

We saw a lot of the same folks at the Voxennial that we saw at Temple Gallery.

The Vox show of more than 30 young artists was curated by artist Virgil Marti (who said to Roberta and me that he made his choices based solely on what he liked--which seems the right way to go about these things, if we're going by the results), and Elyse Gonzales, assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Artist Joseph Hu hung the show, said Marti. He did a great job.

levickas, joe
The quality of the work was pretty even, although I did have some favorites. Joe Levickas' drawing, "Native Americana: Mohawk," stopped me in my tracks. The mix of fine drawing technique with sharp observations of humanity and society--and fashion--result in a terrific piece that recalls the iconic pictures of Native Americans like Sitting Bull. But Levickas undermines the icon with the leather jacket, the paunch, the hairdo, the earring, the tattoo, etc.
chauhan, maanik singh
Next to it, Maanik Singh Chauhan's "Sikh & tired," oil on panel, is beautifully painted. The title is a little glib, but the image of a Sikh at the bottom edge of a painting that's mostly wall, on a (prison?) pallet beneath a blanket that looks suspiciously like it came out of the Sears catalog, is quite a different take on difference and exoticism than say the proud, center-focus "Moorish Chieftain" by Charlemont.
bessel, eric
The show has not a lot of photographs, but this c-print by Eric Bessel, "A Woman Inspecting Faulty Plumbing, Collinsville, CT" offers a hard-edged slice of life. Its daily-grumbles quality and suggestion of barely getting by is offset by the unusual ceiling angle. The surprise of the long gray curly mop suggests this woman's glory days are not only past but also missed sorely. That's a lot of information.
borker, marina
Marina Borker, who used to make tape drawing installations on walls, showed this terrific acrylic-on-wood painting, "Box," that merges the pattern of the wood, the portrait, and the box--is this a copying machine?--into something that questions portraiture, painting and materials all in one fell swoop. The wood patterns remind me of Kate Bright's expressionistic water paintings, but the material is the exact opposite--not slick like Bright but rather rough and elemental. The breaking of the rectangle makes a lot of sense here.
murphy-price, althea
"Sunday Crown," Althea Murphy-Price's chapeau of synthetic hair, wool and wire is such an amazing thing that I hardly know where to begin. It conflates the fabulous Sunday hats that African-American churchgoers sport with the sculptured forms of African-American hair fashions with satellites of plaited plate shapes. Somehow it also recalls the dignity of top hats and dressing up, something most of us have abandoned for jeans and t-shirts. Our mistake. This hat is a challenge for all of us to rise to.
prayzner, andrew
And finally Andrew Prayzner's oil on panel "Nymphs and Satyr" invades the suburbs with a moon landing vehicle as a peeping-Tom Hummer Sherman tank. The bikini-clad sex-bomb lasses are giving the tank a scrub in the driveway while a deer/satyr looks on from the lawn. Behind is a '50s suburban home topped by an outsized satellite dish. This is so full of leering sexuality, bad taste and undermined tranquility that it makes me think Bo Bartlett and Sidney Goodman could learn a thing or two about humor and a light touch from this kid.

There's lots more worthy work, so put this show on your list. Others in the show are Alex Beroz, Lucas Blalock, Emily Blaskovich, Jodi Boatman, Morgan Craig, Kenneth Deprez, Nick Paparone and James Dillon, Sarah Gamble, Liz Glynn, David Guinn, Anna Hofverberg, David Kasdorf, Nancy Lewis, Jason Gene Loebs, Tricia Lopez, Craig Mateyunas, Mike Mergen, Annette Lee Monnier, Naomi Reis, Jessica Ritter, Ruriko Shimizu, David Slovic, Amy Stevens, Kate Stewart, Corrie Tice and Brian Zegeer.

permanent link   libby 11:59 PM
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Posted by libby

As usual, it takes an out-of-towner to remind us of what we've got. Fellow blogger Martin Bromirski wrote in anaba that he was planning to participate in "Art for the Cash Poor," an inLiquid event coming up this Saturday, in Philadelphia, of course, at 4th and Wood.

Inspired by Martin as well as the InLiquid crew, we decided to join in the festivities, which as of this afternoon had attracted 99 artists (including us). Besides, we thought the event's bling-bling logo was irresistable. Hope to see you there.

permanent link   libby 9:43 PM
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Posted by roberta

There's something about putting art in a grand space that elevates it. The Ice Box is Philadelphia's grand space--big unobstructed high-ceilinged. Your spirits rise just being in the room. And while everyone wants to see a huge work, something on the scale of Richard Serra's steel canyons, say, in there, or maybe a big inflatable Panamarenko, big is not the only way to go here.
mcraven, kelly

The Tyler MFA show is a paintings-heavy exhibit with a few tiny works that hold their own in the big room by drawing you in to their microcosms. Some of the small works are so engaging they make the room fall away around you. Kelly McRaven's two small Vuillard-like interiors, (one is above) the first works you encounter when walking in the Alex Baker-curated show, are tiny. And what makes them captivating is the puzzle of why a young Tyler MFA would paint them. Academy-style paintings from a graduate of Tyler, the school that's so not-Academy it almost shouldn't be in the same sentence? I puzzled over that without finding a satisfactory answer. Perhaps the works are fantasy paintings, perhaps the photo source material is from magazines, perhaps from the artist's own photos of trips to fancy houses. Either way the modest-sized works convey a fascination with although not really a longing for a different time and place. Rather if anything what I picked up was a judgment against our view of the past and our longing for it. These paintings don't seem to long for this lifestyle but they do want a viewer to look and think about that time, those people, that richly-appointed place. And compare.
eudy, michael

Like I said, the show's paint-heavy and many of the works seem solid. I especially like Michael Eudy's "Untitled," (above) another painting of a swanky interior (this one contemporary) which must be based on a magazine photo and showed nice iconoclastic attitude towards the source. It took me a while to warm up to this painting. Its surface is turgid with thick paint and doesn't please up close. But from a middle distance its graphics, colors and composition are compelling and odd and stay with you.
lincoln, amy


Amy Lincoln's "Alex," a nice washy portrait, reminded me a little too much of Elizabeth Peyton, but redeemed itself by not falling into the realm of fashion. The portrait is more sensitively drawn than Peyton's works and has the feel of psychological truth.
ullrich, kirsten


Kirsten Ullrich's "Poultry" a tower of babbling open-mouthed fowls makes me laugh. The excellent cartoony painting takes you from Frank Purdue to Carroll Dunham and Norman Rockwell, and its colors are simply great.

walker, maria
Maria Walker's "Untitled," a reductivist game table with a puzzle in progress presented something that felt new. I want to say Richard Artschwager and his playful furniture came to mind.

chauhan, maanik singh

Maanik Singh Chauhan's two fiery orange paintings based on newspaper photographs are latter day cousins of Warhol silkscreen paintings. The works focus on Sikh subculture, showing in one, a group of turbaned men playing basketball, and in the other a street confrontation with police about ready to crack some heads. Chauhan is represented in the Voxennial show with a small oil painting of a sleeping Sikh. I love the impulse to paint from your life and make it monumental. Everybody should paint themselves as if they're Paul Bunyan or Joan of Arc. Nobody else is gonna do it for you.
atzberger, elizabeth


Elizabeth Atzberger's "Continental Mark III" is a gloppy abstract amalgam painting that includes 3-D elements from the floor of a girl's bedroom: jewelry, rubberbands, a showlace. Fun.
jackson, ianthe

Drawing up a storm


A fair number of artists present drawings in the show. Nice counterpoint to the paintings.

Ianthe Jackson's "Three drawings for performances" are a high point both for the ideas at play (people interacting with each other to play up power and balance issues) and for Jackson's delicacy of touch in her drawings. (above shows a woman either sucking the life out of a man or perhaps pumping him up with air, who knows)


Jason Scuilla and Althea Murphy-Price's large panel drawings are drawings duking it out with painting. Big as any painting in the show -- bigger even, Scuilla's multi-panel drawing, based on Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" painting, is a riot of sex, anger, love, and white out or white chalk maybe. I thought it was pretty great. (above is detail of Scuilla's piece)

scuilla, jason
Murphy-Price, who has an outstanding sculpture in the Voxennial, draws hairy dots with hairy lines in a map-like configuration that suggests statistical data like population density or income levels. "The Distance Between" with its hairy black holes is an angry work that called to mind another angry maker of black holes, Kara Walker. Murphy-Price is an artist I hope to see more of.
murphy-price, althea
In the interest of getting this post up I will leave the sculpture components of the show until later today. A parting note here. Like the curated Penn MFA show this curated MFA group exhibit is excellent. I like art fairs but give me a good curator any day. They can make the work sing in chorus.

permanent link   roberta 8:44 AM
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Posted by roberta

Libby and I saw a lot of young art on Friday night. Our trek took us first to Temple Gallery for the exuberant installation by Joy Feasley and friends (Kait Midgett and Paul Swenbeck).
feasley, joy

(Top image shows Midgett, founder of the late, great Project Room with her daughter Wesley and husband Eric at the very crowded opening.)
midgett, kait

Next we hit the Voxennial, the first-ever juried new talent show at Vox Populi and the two-person show "Cats v Dinosaurs" at Black Floor.
swenbeck, paul
Saturday I visited Vox again, and ran over to Moore College for the "5 into 1" juried student show organized by Philadelphia Sculptors and to the Ice Box for the Tyler juried MFA show. I'm on system overload, but it was interesting seeing so much young work all over town -- several of the artists appearing in more than one venue -- and to be able to notice what's in the air and on the brains of the graduates.


I'll just mention a few items from Black Floor and Moore here. See Libby's post for more on Moore. I'll cover the Vox show in the Weekly (issue of June 15) and get to the Tyler show in another post.
aiosa, robert
(image here is one of the Ikea-esque, but not, glass display cases in Feasley's Temple show. In the case are ceramic oobleck objects by Paul Swenbeck. When Libby and I were at the opening we ran into Shannon Bowser and Clint Takeda. Takeda was jotting down a sketch of one of Swenbeck's clay creatures in a little red notebook. There's definitely an affinity between what Swenbeck made in clay in this exhibit and the fanciful alien characters Takeda draws and sculpts himself. BTW Takeda told us he'd just come back from North Carolina where he de-installed the show "Scarab" from its month-long run at Lump Gallery)

The Tyler and Moore shows close very soon and I'm sorry to say neither one has a web presence I can refer you to for directions and such. The Tyler show's up today 12-6 pm, and next Sat. and Sun from 12-6 pm at the Ice Box. The 5 into 1 show's up to June 11 at Moore College.

I saw similar imagery across a bunch of venues over the weekends. Lots of animals, animals as humans, and humans as monsters seem to be on young brains. Portraiture, self-portraiture and other documentary-type impulses are in the air, seemingly important again (I'm so glad), with photos from trips and photo-paintings documenting events from newspapers, magazines and dreams. Fabricated objects have replaced installation art, although there was some installation art -- in the form of video screening rooms. And the scene, as it has for several years now, looks vigorous and energized.

5 into 1 at Moore

"5 into 1" has some great works. (The show's title means the work is from graduates of five local colleges --juried into one show) My favorite pieces are the video, sculpture and photograph by Bobby Aiosa (Uarts grad) all three of which seem throwbacks to earlier times in art when things were, maybe not simpler, but different. Aiosa's video, which I clocked at about four minutes, combines animation and what looks like grainy, vintage film in black and white of a person interacting with a white sculptural object that has the handle of a corkskrew and the bulbous body of a.. piece of fruit? (image right is from the video)


The video has moments of Monty Python-esque drawn-imagery (a drawing shows a Gay '90s mustachioed gent in a bathtub that quickly fills with black ink,). The black and white action sequence with the guy and the object has the choppy, speeded-up editing of the Yevgeny Yusef videos Libby and I both saw last year at Pageant Gallery. The huge black shadows cast by the man reminding me of Fritz Lang and German expressionist filmmaking. (There was also something Charlie Chaplin-esque about it. It was man v machine and not clear if man was in charge. The result of all that vigorous turning of the handle is that a few black arrows come out of the bottom of the object. (The arrows, like the one here, are animated, and they segue into the land of animated dream-like territory).



Aioso's photograph of a couple, the young man sucking on a brown bosc pear and holding hands with a bird-headed girl, reminded me of Max Ernst's surreal paintings of bird-headed female monsters. Only here the image is more dead pan and Halloweenish than surreal. (image is the Aioso's photo)



Peter J. Long's cat sitting on a bed and partially covered by a wood blanket that's made out of interlocking puzzle pieces should win a prize for materials wizardry. The cat, which had a waxy or resinous head, a faux human hair ruff and perhaps a wood body, was a crazy but effective amalgam suggesting animal, human and fantasy. (image is kitty's close-up)

The piece was placed perfectly -- in close proximity to Aioso's photograph, the cat facing that bird woman in the photo. That was the high point for me.

Black Floor Cats and Dinos

More cats at Black Floor Gallery, drawn by collective member Annette Lee Monnier (who's also included in the Voxennial show -- but not with cats, with flags). These cats, which I believe are based on images the artist found online, are not surreal.

They are the very image of pampered pets and imbued with a kind of weirdness that cats have (able to turn on you without provocation; able to look so smart when you know they're not). The big drawing was the best although many of the small ones captured the cat posture and cat essence nicely. (that's an installation shot above)

long, peter

Gerik Forston's drawings of dinosaurs placed next to the cat drawings are all black and white and red. The red is for blood, which appears in each drawing except the big wall drawing shown here. Forston's got dino predators eating their prey, feasting or doing battle. Lots of red ink spilled. The stare-down between the big cat and the big T-Rex across the gallery is a nice touch. Forston is also a collective member.
forston, gerik

I would have liked to see a kitty/dino battle transacted in one drawing where both artists worked together on one piece. But maybe that's for another show.
monnier, annette

permanent link   roberta 4:06 PM
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Posted by libby

A group of old friends once had a debate on titles. Should they be irrelevant to the artwork--just catalog numbers--leaving the object to stand on its own, or should they offer information, thereby becoming another entry point or enhancement for the work.
long, peter
Of course we didn't reach a conclusion. Because as we all know, in the art world, as soon as you make a rule, it's best to break it.

One of my favorite titles of the year is at the "5 Into 1" student show in the lobby at Moore College.

"5 in 1" is an annual juried joint event of Philadelphia Sculptors and jurors Paul Hubbard and Lucartha Kohler. Hubbard heads the 3-D Fine Arts department at Moore and Kohler, a glass sculptor, teaches in the crafts department at the University of the Arts. The show, which showcases sculpture from graduates of the five biggest art schools in town--Moore, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the University of Pennsylvania, University of the Arts and Tyler--seems a little well-behaved, this year.

So back to titles. Peter Long's "Cat Bed: He'll do his best to keep you warm when the fire goes out, but that doesn't mean he understands what love is" is the hands down winner in the titles department. The piece without the title suggests the cat as part lion and therefore a source of danger. The bed and quilt, all of wood, may not present danger, but they do suggest a certain lack of comfort. Although the piece communicated the false comfort, the title did add another dimension of humor. I for one was glad of the words.
frank, rachel
Long also showed a cradle so tall and with such an exaggerated swing, it was in constant danger of tossing the baby. The title is "Sleep Hard Tonight, Baby." Suddenly I'm not so sure, thanks to the title, that this piece isn't about revenge, the baby being a girlfriend, not an infant. The more ideas that can get packed in, the better.
aiosa, robert
Titles aside, Robert Aiosa's untitled video was notable for the plaster object that starred--a what-is-it tool that performs a function not quite definable, the mega-key turning out small bits of who-knows-what. I liked its giant scale as well as its rounded forms that suggested both industrial hand-made origins at the same time. It may have been untitled but it worked for me anyway.

Both Long and Aiosa are from UArts.
slavin, jessica
A piece that surprised was Jessica Slavin's "Performative Garments." I'm unclear if that's a description or a title, but the zippers make them look like they'd be easy to try on. They cross the line beyond fashion by transforming body parts and their functions--limiting the use of some parts, suggestiong parts where there are none. There's something a little Star Trekkie and uniform like about them, and they suggest a world where protective gear might be needed. I'm wondering if these garments reflect Slavin's Penn experience, with the red and blue colors.

carbone, dan
I'd have ignored Dan Carbone's rocking love seat, but then I started thinking about how funny that was. Hey Dan. Good luck with that. Carbone is a Tyler grad. I don't think Rachel Frank's uneasy couple in "The Approach" have a shot at the kind of carefree love that Carbone must be dreaming of. Frank is from Penn.

Alas, I don't have the names of most of the other artists in the show (that's because I got there before the judging and therefore, before the labels went up. I hope to add awards when they are announced.

permanent link   libby 2:14 PM
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