artblog

 
Posted by roberta

When I first started writing for the Weekly I did a piece about where to find the coolest spot in Philadelphia's museums (we all know museums are the coolest places-- but which one was the coolest?) I ran around with a hardware store thermometer and took notes and wrote it up. The PW online archives don't go back that far so I can't link the story alas. But I'll tell you what won -- PAFA. Upstairs in the Furness building in one of the salon-style rooms the temperature was delightful, even better there was a bench to sit on, and cool, green, pastoral Hudson River School paintings to look at. Runner up was the PMA's interior plaza with fountain where there are benches, the sound of water, and Cezanne's cool green and blue paintings to chill you. (top image is "Atmosphere and Environment" by Louise Nevelson, that is it's the base for the big black sculpture which is now undergoing conservation offsite. Click here to see larger version)
aubry, charles


I didn't need the cool when I dropped by the PMA last week. But I did need a dose of what museums do -- curating. My agenda included "The Silver Garden" the black and white photography exhibit in the noisy utility ramp called the Julien Levy Gallery. (I'm dying for the PMA's Perelman Building to open so photography can get a real space at last.) "Garden," which went up in February to coincide with the Philadelphia Flower Show in March and is still topical (when do flowers and trees get out of date) is superb. They dug deep into the collection and dusted off some ancient photographs that are amazing for being old but amazing also for what they are. Like Charles Aubry's "Still Life with Dahlias" (1864) (right) an albumen silver print which is so full of the spirit of death it makes you straighten up a little an pay respect.



In addition, the show of 60 works has blockbuster images by Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, Edward Steichen, and Brett Weston and lots of work by local photographers like Andrea Baldeck, Tom Baril, Tom Brummett, Ray Metzger and more.

There's flowers in backyards, flowers in shop windows, gnarly tree roots, deep woods scenes, faux flowers and mushrooms!
uelsmann, jerry
I had just seen a Ray Metzger forest photo when I stopped by Gallery 339 to see the Stuart Rome show, and Jerry Uelsman's "Untitled" (1965/70) (above left) with a black twig creating a black hole in front of a whited out forest scene reminded me of the Metzger I had seen with black tree/white woods. There's a bunch of reasons to see the show up to July 17 and pair it with the exhilirating Stuart Rome prints at Gallery 339. See post for more on Rome.



(image is "The Garden" by Ray Metzger from the Silver Garden exhibit. It looks like paper trash rolled up and stuck into a fence?)

More museum views later. Libby and I are off to PAFA this morning for the preview of the "Light, Line and Color: American Works on Paper (1765-2005)" which runs to Sept. 4.
metzger, ray

permanent link   roberta 9:13 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by libby

I've seen a lot of stuff lately, so I thought I'd throw up some pictures of some of what I liked:
stolfa, joanna
stolfa, joanna
stolfa, sarah
Portraits of people at a bar, nursing drinks, looking into space, looking like regulars from Sarah Stolfa caught my eye first. She is one of 18 students in the Drexel University Senior Photography Thesis show at Nexus Gallery. Stolfa's people were filled with individuality, confronting a familiar milieu. We see people in the movies in these poses, with these affects, but never in a photograph. (image, "Joanna").



stockbridge, jeffrey


I was also intrigued by Jeffrey Stockbridge's photos and installation of found objects and book. The objects were things people left behind in abandoned homes, including portraits and writings. The photos of those homes and some of the writing were collected in a book. And four of the photographs were up on the wall. It was the whole installation, "Occupied," and the book that caught my interest.
repale, regine


Regine Repale's "La Miche" stood out from her other work for any number of reasons. I liked the stripes and the plaids, which play out over and over in the room. I liked the space behind bracketed by the drapes. I liked the addytood of La Miche. The picture reminded me of the Malick Sidibe photographs in the African Art show at the Art Museum (see Sidibe's photo here).



mccardle, george



Finally, George McCardle's close-up studies of nature and things, although not totally unfamiliar, were beautiful (image, "Untitled 2").






ripley, huston




At Fleisher/Ollman, Huston Ripley's ink on tissue dot matrixes reminded me of a sexy version of Adolf Wolfli's bordered and rohrshach-looking creations, little faces embedded in big ones embedded in big figures. (Ripley's "Untitled," 12 1/2 x 19 inches).

stoudt, linda


Also, Linda Stoudt's pop cartoon inspired oil on gessoed paper or cardboard pieces are reductive natural (and not so natural) shapes in intense colors, some of them with peeled corrugated cardboard becoming part of the composition. The Don Colley notebook pages were fun, exuberant, but I wasn't sure why they were getting the full Leonardo daVinci treatment (image, Stoudt's "Quote.")



hermansader, marcy


Marcy Hermansader's solo show there, "One Thousand Subtractions," was about her father's mental deterioration from Alzheimer's. Using the interiors of security envelopes, she interweaves images of her father, suggesting missing pieces and disintegration. Some of these were stronger than others, but it seemed like an exercise, plus I found the subject so depressing, having lost my own mother to dementia, that I could not find a way to enjoy this work (image, "Wavy," woven color xerox, 9 x 11 7/8 inches, 2003).
masi, louise desalvor
At Muse, paintings by Louise DeSalvor Masi with embedded bits of lace, scarbes, hankies, wedding gowns and embroidered linens had their own way of blocking out flat space. Some of the paintings looked like mancala game boards, some of them like landscapes. But the paint was beautiful, scratched into and full of rich surprises (image, "8 Woven Squares").



pizzolo, sissy




Also there, a variety of pieces by Sissy Pizzolo were based on dolls and a sense of loss. I liked the drawings with Xerox best. The combo of the drawing and collage were loopy, and the way Pizzolo broke the edges of her paper and marched fearlessly with her collaged xerox into the black border was swell. Other pieces were stitched and fierce (image, "Empty Dresses").
mitchell, marianne



At Rosenfeld, Marianne Mitchell's acrylic paintings and pastels virtually pop off the walls. Mitchell, whose father is part of the Mitchell & Giurgola architecture team, went to China and Japan to study art after college, bypassing the MFA route, and her work, according to Richard Rosenfeld, is steeped in Asian philosophy, balancing yin and yang. But what I got out of the paintings was architectural space--rooms with shafts of light, dark corridors, walls absorbing heat and cold--and lots of beautiful color in compositions that challenge balance at the same time that they capture it. One of the small pastels was inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Gates" catching--and not catching--the sun. Mitchell, having lost both her parents to diseases that might be helped by stem cell research, is donating a portion of the proceeds from the show to Project Restore, a stem cell research group at Johns Hopkins. Also showing at Rosenfeld is Diane Pieri. (left, Mitchell's "Flickering")
reavey, peggy
At Rodger LaPelle, Peggy Reavey's "Women Who Hum and Men with Trees" exhibit of surreal paintings have strong moments when the patterns and textures and weird space take over. Here's "Prom Night in Eden." LaPelle mentioned that Reavey is the ex-wife of David Lynch, who used to work at the gallery (hey, not so recently). Also showing there were assemblages by Harvey Weinreich.

bliss, rachel


Painter Rachel Bliss and a bunch of Greenfield Elementary School students under her tutelage are showing at Snyderman. (I mention Greenfield because that's where my kids went, and also because the kids did some swell portraits). Bliss's human monster-animals continue to gaze out with tender eyes from gnarly faces and juicy paint. Bliss was making this kind of work before it became the Space 1026 religion, and she's still at it. I've always loved it and I continue to do so (image, "Scout").

permanent link   libby 11:30 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by libby

Here's a quick take on Do-Ho Suh, the Korean-born hot New York artist whose work is at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Morris Gallery in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
suh, do-ho
The piece to die for is at the Fab--"Paratrooper V." He's a cast stainless steel paratrooper hefting parachute cords, which are 5,500 lipstick-red threads. The threads, which are each equally tense but not exactly taut, together exert so much pull, said Suh in a walk-around tour of his pieces on opening night last week, that the paratrooper and the cast concrete pyramid on which he stands had to be anchored through the concrete floor to the downstairs level. I want to know how Suh got the tension so even and the threads so untangled (right top, "Paratrooper V," linen, polyester, thread, cast stainless steel, cast concrete, plastic beads, 110 x 281 1/2 x 197 inches).

The cords/threads connect to 5,500 signatures embroidered into a blue parachute mounted on the wall, the names closest to the center being Suh's family and friends, and as the circle widens, the connections to Suh get more distant, but still relate to him in some way--a sort of 2 or 3 degrees of separation. Also included on the parachute are signatures from Suh's gallery books, he said (left, "Paratrooper 5" detail).

As for the paratrooper hefting the entwined threads, he's He-Man on steroids, as is the hank he's hefting, which takes on the grace of rich curtain tie-backs and swags. There's an Asian aesthetic playing here--in the figure, the colors, and the tassle of red threads. I'm also reminded of how today's muscular G.I. Joes are probably made in Asia and are not much like the historic, stiff little lead toy soldiers who were more about their uniforms than their bodies.


The modern toy quality of this paratrooper comes out again in "Screen," Suh's most recent piece, also at the Fab (right, "Screen" detail, ABS, stainless steel, 121 1/2 x 516 x 3/4 inches).

The hundreds of figures are mass-produced, toy soldier-ish people in 18 (non-skin) colors, including men and women in a variety of attire, from business clothes to overalls. Their stance is powerful, legs apart, arms raised, and they are interlocked, snapped together, in a united-we-stand grand gesture that bisects the gallery room (left, "Screen" installation shot).


More vulnerable and thoroughly un-toylike is "Paratrooper II" at PAFA, a life-size, slumped, knitted figure in red and silver, supported by 225 organza shirts, also in reds and silvers, that together form a parachute. This piece, which was made in collaboration with The Fab, also suggests that we are interwoven in the fabric of humankind, relying on the family of man past and present to hold us up. They also suggest there's a lot of people on this earth (right, "Paratrooper 2" body detail, knitted monofilament, resin, nylon, poly organza, stainless steel armature).

I want to send these sculptures aboard paper airplanes to Dubya, al-Quaida, Kim Il-Jung, etc., etc. I'll be waiting for the doves to fly back to me (left, "Paratrooper 2" chute detail, 192 x 180 inches diameter).

permanent link   libby 9:16 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

[ed. note: this post follows up on this one immediately before about "Woods" at DUMBO Art Center]

Post from Brent Burket
It was interesting. I was talking with the guy at the desk in DUMBO and he was saying that he and a number of his friends were all contemplating moving to Philly or Baltimore. The insane real estate market is really killing feasible living situations for artists up here. Although, from what I've heard things are heating up in that area in Philly too.

Leo [Berk] should have changed his name to Bark for the show. It's a really nice piece and it smells good too. Totally Serra in the way that while you're going round and round you don't think that it will ever end. Not heavy enough to kill any assistants though. Unless they got splintered to death or something.

--Brent Burket is artblog's New York correspondent

permanent link   roberta 3:00 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

Brent Burket our soon to be roving NY correspondent emailed this additional Philly-New York news:

"I stumbled onto Justin Witte's work when I was roaming around DUMBO on Sunday. Definitely the strongest stuff in the show." --Brent

The show? "Woods" a group show at DUMBO Art Center curated by Brian Wallace, Director of Exhibitions, Galleries at Moore.

witte, justin
Witte's silkscreen print "Whitewash" is what's up on the DUMBO website so that must be what's in the show. The work is from the artist's latest Vox Populi solo a blizzard of white on white imagery screenprinted in puff paint if memory serves. See posts for Libby's and Roberta's raves about Witte's eye-breaking wintry wonders. (image is installation shot of Witte's show at Vox)



Other artists with Philadelphia connections in "Woods" are Leo Berk whose "Ribbon," a wood-based Richard Serra-esque piece, appeared in the Lewis and Clark-themed show
at Moore in February. See Libby's post and my Weekly review. (image is Berk's "Ribbon" installed in Moore's Paley Gallery)

Also there's Richard Bottwin, whose work appeared recently in a group show at Pentimenti Gallery. Here's Libby's post on that show.

Meanwhile, Dreaming of far off places

And because we all love to travel in the summer, here's a little sideways-related tidbit about art-related travel. Earlier this month, Wallace slipped away to Rio and Sao Paolo -- on art business, to meet with artist Artur Barrio and plan his upcoming exhibit in Philadelphia. Barrio is an internationally-known artist whose work is wildly underexposed in the US, and Wallace got a $197,000PEI grant for an exhibit of his work at Moore. Here's an artfacts.net page on Barrio, who was in Dokumenta in 2002 and in the Sao Paolo Bienale in 2004. He was born in Portugal in 1945.
berk, leo saul

permanent link   roberta 2:45 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by libby

Post by Douglas Witmer

[ed. Note: this is the final part of the three-partDouglas Witmer-Linn Meyers email conversation that began Monday, June 20, on artblog. Here, Meyers talks about the physical experience of making her work, accidental and intentional outcomes in her systematic process, and her "direct," not abstract, art. Read part one here and part two here.]

DW Let's talk more about the idea of "resistance" you brought up. Obviously it's something quite physical for you when you are working. The term "excruciation" comes up in the essay from your recent Margaret Thatcher Projects catalogue. I scoffed a bit when I first read that word. But hearing you talk recently about the actual duration of time it takes to make some of your lines, I begin to understand. You need a certain dexterity to perform your work, and there is a bodily expenditure of energy, which may result in fatigue. A magic marker line doesn't exactly record you starting strong at one end and ending weak at the other like a pencil line might (right, Untitled, 2004, ink and colored pencil on Mylar, 10" x 11.5").

LM RESISTANCE. I love it.

When I make the gravity drawings the resistance is minimal; it is mostly a matter of being present and simply mastering the technique. I tape the Mylar to the wall, I stand in front of it with both of my feet flat on the floor, I place my hand/pen at the top of the page, and I draw a straight line by harnessing the force of gravity. Then I do it all over again. The gravity guides my movement, so the only real resistance is the tip of the pen against the paper (and the side of my hand dragging downward against the Mylar.)

About a year ago I started making the horizontal line drawings. There's A LOT of resistance there. First of all, it's totally unnatural to draw a horizontal line. Agnes Martin did it with a straight edge, but doing it freehand is another story. So then you've got the drag of the pen and the hand, plus the resistance of my body to obey the rules. It's very exciting. Every moment is like a suspense movie.

The word "excruciation" or excruciating is not really in my vocabulary. I like my drawings to challenge me physically. It's another way of being awake. Maybe it can be "excruciating" for some people to look at them.

As far as the variation in marks: I think there is probably a lot of variation. Some of it is hard to see for the reason that you already stated -- pen doesn't show that sort of thing as much as pencil does. But the distance between the lines is one way of seeing the variation -- it think you can actually see moods in there. It's almost like an amateur reading Tarot cards though -- one doesn't always know what one is looking at. I'm not sure I can even really re-trace my steps in my own drawings.

Accidents of illusion and line

DW So you were working to get "decoration" and "illusion" out of the work. But there seems to be an incredible illusionism to some of the recent work, which you seem to be really going with. Can you talk more about how and why you allow this?

LM As far as the illusion in the cube drawings...that started by accident. I had been making drawings with parallel lines, usually two blocks of parallel lines separated by a small gap. I was taking them down off of the studio wall one day and stacking them on my work table, one on top of the other. The cube thing just sort of happened by accident at that point, and I liked it so I pursued it further. For many years I had avoided the moiré patterns that occur when two or more patterns are layered, but for the first time, with the cube drawings, I felt that that event was working to my advantage (left, "200461," from the artist's Gallery Joe exhibit, up through July 2).

One of the things that I like about those pieces is that they seem to depict discreet objects, but they really do not do that at all. They are simply sets of parallel lines.

I talked before about the edges of my drawings and how important it is to me that they not seem like a fragment of something larger. Well, with the cube drawings, they really are separate from any thing else around them.
I love the way those pieces float through the exhibition space at Gallery Joe. I don't think my other works float. That's something I need to think more about

DW I think it's kind of funny that you so flagrantly break the fundamental rule of Drawing 101: fill the page! But back to illusionism. But I can't help thinking looking at some of the recent work, particularly the ones with the more "billowing" images, that you are going for the illusion from early on in the process. It doesn't seem to be a by-product. When you say that in the end the works "do not depict discreet objects" I think you are right in the same way that one could say that all representational painting is abstraction. (Which is to say that I think some of the works DO, to a greater or lesser extent, depict discreet objects.) I wonder, what does allowing (cultivating?) this strident illusionism mean for you at this time? Or maybe I'm seeing something you're not seeing (right, Untitled, 2002, pinholes in mylar, acrylic, colored pencil, 7.5" x 7")?

LM First of all, I am aware that certain sets of rules (that I use in my drawings) produce certain effects. But the drawings are not composed, which is to say, I may know that the dots are likely to create a billowing effect, but WHEN they billow, or WHERE, is not something that I can anticipate.

On the same subject, I have, over the past few years, made peace with the fact that many people who look at art often allow their minds to draw references within the images that they see. This is something that we learn to Judge in art school, I think.

One of the best comments that I ever got about my work was from a woman who came into the studio who had absolutely NO art education. She kind of gasped and said, "Oh, are these pictures of the wind?" (left, "18,945," 2002, ink, acrylic, mylar, 17.5" x 12")

Next, what's really funny is that I never even thought of that Drawing 101 rule! Honestly. I must've missed that class.

To me, talking about “discreet objects” and talking about abstraction don't necessarily belong in the same paragraph. They are two separate subjects that have an intersecting area.

I know that my work falls into the category of "abstraction" by default, but I really don't think of my drawings as abstract. (I know you've heard this argument before elsewhere, but I cannot help myself.)

Not abstract but direct

DW What I understand is that in this instance you are referring to the image that is produced, not the drawing itself, as the discreet object. So I guess that comes back to the idea of resistance/tension. And now it's not so much purely visual anymore. It has to do with one's mind and perception of what is real. Right?

LM You got it. But the bigger question remains, (and I have no intention if having either of us tackle this one,) "what is real?" And that loops back to my point about my drawings not being abstract.

DW Given what you have just said, what would you say is the word or phrase you use describe your drawing?

LM I wish I had a word or phrase to define the drawings that I make. I've been searching for a precise and brief way of describing what I do, but I haven't come up with anything. I like the word "direct." I really DO NOT like the word "obsessive." I think it is inaccurate. And I don't think "abstract" gets to the point either.
I certainly do not make "Minimalist" works. However, maybe they are "minimal" simply because they are rather distilled.
On the one hand it is frustrating to not have a simple descriptive phrase that applies to the work that I do, but on the other hand, those categories can be so misleading, maybe I’m lucky not to fit into any of them.


--Douglas Witmer is an artist, blogger and artblog contributor.
meyers, linn

permanent link   libby 1:08 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by libby

Some favorite artists with local connections--Rob Matthews, Sharon Horvath and Thomas Nozkowski-- will be in a group show, "In a Series," at Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, July 7 to Aug. 12.

Also, TC Campuzano, who shows at Fleisher-Ollman, is in a show at White Columns until July 23.

I don't know if I'll get up there or not, but if someone does and wants to write about it...

permanent link   libby 10:15 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

My editor, Doree Shafrir wrote a sweet cover story on one of artblog's favorite alternative venues, Space 1026. I highly recommend a read. The collective, priming itself for big time exposure in an exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco is still the same young, earnest, on the verge of chaos place it always has been, says Shafrir. Only now the group has committees to help get the work done! Lots of nice photos of group members and close-ups of people like Ben Woodward, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Liz Rywelski and others. The article's great exposure in Philadelphia for a group that continues to bring new life and excitement to the art scene. And who even remembers the last time the Weekly ran a cover story on art...six years ago maybe when Eils Lotozo, then a staff writer for the Weekly, now at the Inquirer, and Gerard Brown, then the art critic, co-authored a critique of the Fairmount Park Art Association's New Landmarks program? The paper's archives don't go back that far or I'd link it. (top image is a silkscreen print by Woodward from the time he was wheatpasting them around Philadelphia in 1998.)
woodward, ben

On the art page, my review of the Elizam Escobar exhibit at Taller Puertorriqueno. The surreal images made by the 20-year political prisoner, now released (in 1999) are haunting and evocative of mysteries, secrets, nightmares and fears for the future. The muted colors are a surprise for a Latino painter, but not for one with such a history. The guy can paint. And his prison drawings interwoven throughout the show are exceptional -- magical images of child-like men (himself) in states of waking death. Poignant. (here's one of the prison drawings, a self portrait with Jen, his lawyer and partner)

And last but not least, in the listings, my editor's pick: Los Angeles artist underground artist Shervin at Ashley Gallery.
shervin
One of the great things about this show is that it's happening. That is, the gallery, run by Diane Ashley, took a risk on a young artist who sent her some images, and now she's running with it. It's not a typical Philadelphia show -- the imagery is figurative all right but with blood and gore and maybe a little bit of misogyny...I hope not but a thread of that runs through much work like this that's in the Juxtapoz magazine school of illustrational painting.

I spoke with Shervin by phone when he was in town. Here's some of what he told me. First off, the show's a solo by Shervin (last name Iranshahr) but because he's a posse kind of guy he's included a painting by each one of his compadres, Sean Cheetham, John Paul Altamira, and others, and his mentor, Michael Hussar in the show. Shervin and his friends met Michael Hussar when the artist was teaching a class at the College of Design in Pasadena. "My group of friends befriended him and he became our mentor," Shervin said. They used to go into Hussar's studio and watch him paint. Then they found a model and did "a la prima" sessions together. (image is detail of Shervin's "Death of Venus")

"Mike had a perfect palette--his work is really colorful," said Shervin. "We adapted his palette."
cheetham, sean
I asked if the group did group critiques because I was having some trouble envisioning these darkling 20- and 30-somethings (chains and piercings, leather and mohawks perhaps?) practicing the delicate act that is critiquing someone elses art. Shervin, 27, said "We do critiques all the time. But it goes beyond that. We're all like separate little thoughts..." but together they make a whole paragraph or something.

Several of the group are members of the band Del Toro and recently in the hot, new Los Angeles gallery district (Gallery Row) Shervin and his buds have been invited to take over this or that new space before it's opened and have a one-night exhibit with music. "We're in the underground movement. We're well known," he explained. "They give us a room for the night and no rent. We've done five or six of them. No, we don't have a name [for the group]. We're our own little tribe. Phone calls go out to the usual suspects and we've been selling stuff." (image is Cheetham's a la prima painting "Steph Crying" -- it's not in the show but from the artist's website which has a group of his a la prima paintings.)

I have to say I love Shervin's energy and enterprise. He's a go-getter and I predict this is a no-name group to watch.
escobar, elizam

permanent link   roberta 8:49 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

Stuart Rome's photographs of deep forest thickets on view at Gallery 339 until July 24 have a kind of excessive exuberance that reminds me of the wild and wooly drip paintings of Jackson Pollock and the dotted wonder worlds of Trudy Kraft. Of course Rome's black and white photographs don't resemble either one of those painters' paintings. But the nature photographs have this in common with Pollock and Kraft. They are seducers able to draw the viewer into their swirling, overlapping layers of dots and lines, swoops and frothy light and, while they're not at all mandala-like, Rome's photographs have hypnotic charm. (top image is a shot taken in a Florida swamp. Notice the almost mesmerizing twinning in the shot)

Gallerist Martin McNamara was puzzling over the fact that some people look at Rome's forest photographs say "Ah, Ray Metzger-like." McNamara knows his Metzgers (he showed me two -- also sylvan woodland scenes -- also beautiful) and pointed out some differences between the two photographers' takes on similar subject matter. (here's Pollock's "Autumn Rhythm")

As we gazed back and forth at the Romes and the Metzger's I had this thought. For me, and I'll admit I'm basing this on the two Metzger works I saw (and my knowledge of the photographer's non-forest works, like those on view at Locks), Metzger's forest photographs tell the story of the woods seen by one on the outside looking in. There is a distinction between photographer and subject in these photos which describe something beautiful but do so one stepped removed, the analytical eye and mind at work framing the view. The two Metzger works I saw showed almost a playfulness -- the artist's mind and eye finding an incredible black hole of a tree sitting in the midst of an otherwise whited out scene. It was interesting intellectually and puzzling in an amusing way.

Rome's works on the other hand, don't have that analytical distance between photographer and subject. They feel like they were taken by someone at one with the scene -- smitten, perhaps, by nature and willing to be the acolyte for others. I guess Rome's works are romantic.

McNamara pointed out that many of the works have a circular motif which is evocative of going in to a deeper more spiritual place. "Presence Bali 1994" (shown at right) and "Tinicum Philadelphia 1997" are two examples. Not only do they have circular motifs within their square format scenes but they have a beguiling, "come hither" quality that's most sexy. Rome in these works is playing shaman. Showing a world of delights that can transport you to a higher realm. Like the Transcendentalists before him, Rome is pointing to the mysical in nature, the spiritual. Which is not to say he doesn't frame the shot and analyze with his mind. But the oneness of artist with subject is pretty complete. You don't feel that analytical space in between like you do in the Metzgers I saw.

Rome's photographs are taken in places all over the globe. Some of the nicest are close to home, in Fairmount Park, Tinicum and other places in Pennsylvania. The artist uses a medium focus camera, a Hasselblad, McNamara said. And these works have been compiled into a book, "Forest," forthcoming any minute, published by Nasraeli, a fine art publisher that specializes in excellent quality small editions. The gallery hopes to have some of the books in in July and will have a book signing in the fall.


Meanwhile, news of upcoming events at the new gallery: They're planning an emerging artist show in August with (the list's incomplete but here are some names): Sarah Stolfa (a Drexel grad whose work is currently in the Drexel student show at Nexus). Stolfa, a student of Rome's has a portrait series, "McGlinchy's" that got some notoriety last year. Robert Rascka, a Pittsburgh photographer who's not exactly emerging but is underexposed here, will be in the show and two CFEVA affiliates, Serge J.F. Levy, a street photographer, and Jackie Fugere who uses solarization in her prints on the theme of luck and chance (I saw both those artists' works in a CFEVA show recently. See post) (last image is Rome's "Fiery Leaves Begin to Drop")

Anyway, inspired by Rome's ardor for the forest, I ran up to the PMA to see the group photography exhibit of black and white flower and forest scenes, "Silver Garden." More on that in another post.
rome, stuart

permanent link   roberta 4:47 PM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by libby

If you were holding off on going to Locks Gallery because the additional Jennifer Steinkamp video hadn't yet arrived (see Roberta's post on its absence and on the remainder of the show), it's now there. And if you already went and missed Steinkamp's second video, go back now.
steinkamp, jennifer
"Dance Hall Girl #9," like the larger "Cleopatra," is flower-based and riveting. It's an image of rampions (a kind of flower) projected at floor level up to about knee height, so they seem the size of real flowers, except they're oddly sexy and predatory. The corollas of petals somehow seeming to grasp as they bow and preen and display their glory. The way the flowers silently move on a blank background, not reponding to anything like wind but responding to some self-generated force gives the plants an intentionality that is downright creepy and beautiful at the same time.

Check out Steinkamp's really great web page, which has lots of little clips of her computer-generated flower pieces as well as lots of other work. You can see clips from a bouquet of the Dance Hall Girl videos there, including #9.

Here's are some tidbits about rampion, also called ramps, the subject of "Dance Hall Girl #9":

There is an Italian tradition that the possession of a rampion excites quarrels among children. The plant figures in one of Grimm's tales, the heroine, Rapunzel, being named after it, and the whole plot is woven around the theft of rampions from a magician's garden. In an old Calabrian tale, a maiden, uprooting a rampion in a field, discovers a staircase that leads to a palace far down in the depths of the earth.

(There's more about the plant and its culinary uses here.)

Interestingly enough, Steinkamp has a room installation called "Rapunzel" on exhibition at Lehmann Maupin gallery as we type, up until June 25. I'd rush right over if I were in New York.

An fyi on technique: Steinkamp draws these flowers, petal by petal, on the computer and then animates them, according to an item I found via her website.

permanent link   libby 11:22 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

Post by Douglas Witmer


[ed. Note: this is part two of the Douglas Witmer-Linn Meyers email conversation that began yesterday on artblog. Here, Meyers talks about building a drawing, about the rhythm of her day in the studio and about her works' relationship to that of Agnes Martin. Read part one here.]

DW You work with a very defined set of approaches to mark making. Any of these approaches, in the accumulative way that you employ them, feel to me like they could go on forever. I'm interested in finding out how you come to define the beginnings and ends of these processes resulting in a finished work. (top image is "200461" from the artist's Gallery Joe exhibit, up through July 2.)

LM Usually the drawing that I am [at work] on will give me an idea for the next drawing, and I usually start another one before the first is finished. Sometimes I have a whole list of ideas that I want to work down.


So I'll roll out a piece of Mylar that size, and get started. Sometimes the drawing works the way I expect it to work. If all goes as planned, the composition develops within the margins of the cut Mylar. But sometimes in the middle of a drawing I see something developing that needs more space, and I will go beyond the original size by splicing another piece of Mylar to the first piece, or by overlapping the first piece of Mylar on top of another piece. There's one drawing on my website (I think it's the 4th one down on the portfolio page) where I started with one piece of Mylar that was about 42"x62", and I ended up adding 5 more pieces that size. That drawing ended up being 10 ft x 11 ft. It just needed room to breathe. (image is detail of "Untitled 2004")


It is important to me that the images have a clearly defined ending. Because they are pattern-based, I always fear that they will look like wallpaper if they don't have defined edges. Where the drawing ends is where it ends -- I don't want them to be understood as fragments. They are defined periods of time.

(image is installation shot from Gallery Joe)


Daily rhythms and sneaking studio time on the weekend

DW What is a typical day in your studio like? What work patterns do you find yourself falling into? Are there activities in the periphery like music, reading, family, etc?

LM My studio is in a building behind our house, so my commute is only about 150 feet. I have always had a hard time getting started in the morning, though.
When I used to rent a studio that was separate from our home I found it easy to get there but more difficult to get started once I arrived. I would usually spend an hour or so reading when I arrived.

Nowadays I start by clearing deskwork and answering or sending e-mail. Then I walk out to the studio (I sometimes pull weeds or poke at the plants along the path as I go out there,) and read for a few minutes, and then I begin to draw. (image is "200461b")

I have a hard time listening to music while I work because many of my drawings require that I count, and the music creates a weird distraction from that counting. So I usually listen to NPR, or work in silence. I screen a lot of phone calls.

Once I get going, I can usually draw for 1 and a half - 4 hours without taking a break. When my hand or my eyes get tired, I either spend a little time reading or I come inside the house to check my e-mail or get a snack. My workday is generally from about 9 to 4:30, weekdays. Two or three times a week I get back out to the studio at night for a couple of hours. Sometimes I sneak a little time in over the weekend.

Measuring the inner landscape

DW I assume Agnes Martin comes up a lot when people talk about your work. There is a superficial visual relationship. And it seems there is a shared reverence for nature. But when you were describing the development of your work from "landscape" early on towards the abstraction that you currently make, what immediately popped into my head was Jackson Pollock's famous quote: "I am nature." And then in your description of your work, I found myself thinking of the films of him working outside and what an incredibly even rhythmic meter there was to his movement in those films. Shifting back to your work, I thought about the album cover of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures." It features a graphic recording of the light pulses from the first discovered pulsar. Then the idea of your work as a graphic recording of the "emotional tremors" constantly happening within came to mind. And then I said to myself: "inner seismograph." How does this strike you as it relates to your work?

LM I LOVE THAT!! As far as Pollock's quote, I sort of believe in the inter-connectedness of everything and everyone. "Everything matters," to quote the Gallery Joe exhibition title.

As far as Agnes is concerned, you should know that I do love her work. There are many big differences. One difference that I think is undeniable is that she was attempting to make paintings about pure joy and I can’t do that. When I draw I am interested in recording the full range of human experience: chaos, love, insecurity, joy, etc. (last image is detail of "Untitled 2004")

--Douglas Witmer is an artist, blogger and artblog contributor.
meyers, linn

permanent link   roberta 8:14 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

Post by Douglas Witmer

[Ed note: This is the beginning of an email Q&A between artblog contributor Douglas Witmer and artist Linn Meyers. It was sparked when the two artists met at Meyers’ opening at Gallery Joe for her current exhibition which closes July 2. Meyers creates reductive drawings using systems and layers of color and line on both sides of sheets of mylar. In addition to showing at Gallery Joe, Meyers exhibits at Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York. See her website for more pictures and information. More parts of the conversation will follow. ]
witmer, douglas
DW How did you arrive at the direction of the work you make?

LM Up to my third year in college there were only a couple of pieces that I did that really mattered to me. I still have one, it's a painting of the sheet that divided my junior year studio from the other students' -- painted in chiaroscuro on a found piece of wood. Very renaissance, which isn't surprising, since I taught myself how to draw by copying pictures of old masters' drawings. (in the studio is "Untitled 2004," ink on mylar.)

When I was in my final year at Cooper Union in 1989-90, I was doing some magical realism -- mostly involving landscapes. I remember thinking that the images should make the viewer feel out of balance -- the idea being that if one feels physically out of balance it will sort of wake you up to your internal world. Of course, most of those paintings were only moderately successful.

Dropping the horizon line


When I moved out to Oakland, CA in '91, the landscape paintings I was doing ended up being read as relating to "The Environment." At the time it seemed that everything was being understood in terms of one's political issues. My mentor, Dennis Leon, suggested I examine why I was using the landscape genre at all in the paintings, and that question lead me to eventually drop the horizon, which had become an artificial device. The resulting paintings, which lacked an identifiable perspective without the horizon line, became more abstract. But of course, I was still thinking of them as landscapes! (image is "200448" from the Gallery Joe exhibit.)

When I got back to New York in 1994 I began to let go of the few remaining references to nature that still existed in the compositions. The paintings became more about mark-making at that point, which was a big breakthrough.

Doing away with illusion

At that point, I was also interested in doing away with illusion, which had come to seem like another insincere device. Unfortunately, when I finally got to the point where I was making paintings that had no illusion of space or light, images that were mostly just repetitive marks, I found that I didn't like them! I sort of hit a road block at that point, and I floundered around for a while, making things that now seem rather decorative.

Slow breathing in Omaha

Eventually, while I was on a residency at The Bemis Center in Omaha, NE, my work made a leap. I was given this huge beautiful studio in which to work without any interruption. It was winter in Omaha. And I was lost. Somehow, I ended up doing these system-based pencil drawings that lead me onto my current path. I drew small, individual squares; each square was connected at its corners to other squares. They looked like fishing nets rather than grids. As I inhaled, I drew a small square, and then as I exhaled I drew another. I tried to slow myself down. I guess it was a response to being in solitary confinement in Omaha. Rather than breathing faster to try to speed up the whole thing, I slowed everything down and became incredibly focused. It was amazing. Since that point, most of my drawings have had some sort of system behind them. And they have mostly had something to do with time. (image is "200458bc" from the Gallery Joe exhibit)

DW I’m particularly interested in what has lead you to focus on drawing.

LM I think it's the immediacy and directness of the medium. There's never a moment when I am forced to turn away from the picture I am making, (to mix paint, clean a brush, etc.) A pen feels like a direct extension of my body, so there is less of a partition between my work and me. I also just love the feeling of putting a rigid point (the point of a pen) against the hard surface of the Mylar on the wall. There's a lovely resistance between the two materials. "Resistance"--that's also something that I love. And its absence.

This all sort of loops back to those ideas I had in the late 90's. I've found that for me the way to really wake myself up (and hopefully the way to wake up the viewer as well) is to be deeply focused while I am working. Rather than looking to make an image that is out of balance, (as I did back in the late 80's and early 90's,) I am seeking balance. Or examining the way it comes and goes. Appreciating the temporary loss of balance at times. (image is "Untitled" from Meyers' last Margaret Thatcher Projects show.)

--Artist Douglas Witmer is an artblog contributor and fellow blogger. Check out his blog dgls.

meyers, linn

permanent link   roberta 10:53 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

Good day, all. This is just a news flash to let you know some of what we're working on this week. First off, artblog contributor Douglas Witmer has a wonderful Q&A with artist Linn Meyers that we'll be bringing you in several parts beginning later today. Meyers' show is up now at Gallery Joe and Libby posted on it here and here's my post linking to my Weekly piece. (Meyers' show is up through July 2)
escobar, elizam
I'm hoping to blurb more on photography -- specifically the great new Stuart Rome show at Gallery 339 -- which relates in excellent fashion to the Silver Garden group exhibit PMA Photography Curator Kate Ware curated up at the museum -- and yes, it's safe to go up the hill again -- the Dali crowds and end of year school group have decamped, although it was still nicely populated the day I stopped in. The Rome show (all images are on the gallery's website by the way) is up to July 24 and Garden's up til July 17. (top image is Rome's "Fiery Leaves Begin to Drop, Fairmount Park (In tribute to Alan Ginsberg)" one of my favorites in an array of mystical forest scenes)
rome, stuart


My Weekly review this Wednesday will highlight painter and former political prisoner Elizam Escobar's dark, surreal paintings at Taller Puertorriqueno. On Wednesday I'll run more pictures and information. (image is detail of Escobar's "Generacion Libre")

And we have a new blog contributor coming on board from New York -- Brent Burket -- a self-proclaimed art maniac just like us! Burket is an artblog reader who's been in touch with us to get tips on Philadelphia shows and galleries for occasional trips to our city. He's a collector and a writer of enthusiastic colorful prose who knows the NY scene from having lived there for ten years.

I ran into Burket quite by chance at the Do-Ho Suh opening Friday night at the Fabric Workshop and Museum -- he's an FWM member!

Here's some of what Burket wrote in a recent email, just to give you an idea:

Since I've lived here [in New York] I've fallen quite nicely ass-over-tin-cups into some artworld connections that have led me to interesting places. I've been very lucky in garnering some excellent guides to an overwhelming landscape. Girlfriends, co-workers, relatives of friends, an angry letter to the head of an arts organization that turned into a friendship, and so on. All of these things have served to make my experience of art deeper and more delicious. I would very much like to share my cake.

Just a word about Philadelphia: YEE-HAWWWW! Moving beyond the Museum and the ICA, it's been such a kick to discover the other parts of the Philadelphia art world. In one day I saw more good art than I've seen in Williamsburg in the last 4 months. I'll take my good art where I find it. Williamsburg, Philly, Baltimore. Wherever.I don't care very much about scenes, movements, history, or characters. That's somebody else's problem. Not that it's not fun to watch. It's just that all I really want is to swoon. I love being knocked a bit daft the way I was on Friday night. That first piece [Suh's "Paratrooper II installed in PAFA's Morris Gallery] dropped my jaw, but the second piece [Paratrooper V] made me feel like I was the one that needed the parachute. The memory brings a lightness to my chest that is somewhere between salvation and queasiness, a bit like a landing.

(last image is Suh's "Paratrooper V." I agree with Burket, that's the piece with the jaw-dropping wonderment factor. Click here for bigger version of the photo at flickr)
suh, do ho

permanent link   roberta 8:49 AM
Comments? Let us know.   

 
Posted by roberta

My daughter Oona is a budding art collector. As a young 24 she's got a taste for the surreal and the cartoony, and her apartment is wallpapered with prints by people like Ben Woodward, Andrew Jeffrey Wright and others. She's also big into movies and anime and has movie posters all around and it all seems to work. Oona's biggest purchase so far is a tangled woodland scene by Paul Santoleri, a print from a Spector Red Dot sale that is her pride and joy, with an Escher-like puzzle quality all done with a nature motif. (Santoleri has work up now til the end of July at Projects Gallery in Northern Liberties (that's Hyder Gallery's new name). Check out the link for images.)

Last week Oona had us over for dinner and showed us a new work, a hand-made poster whose central image is a big ape. The piece is by her friend Dave Parker. The ballpoint pen production, which must have been 24" by 36" was made over the course of many months, with Parker working on it while he was visiting friends and socializing. It has references to their entire social circle, all in symbols coded so the insiders know what's what but nobody really "portrayed" in out and out portraiture. It's teen notebook art but ambitious and extremely well done and I didn't have my camera with me. Darn. (top image is a detail of a Parker self portrait and right is a work in progress. Parker said he's still thinking about working on that red sky in the background.)

I wanted to see more of Parker's art so Oona and Parker came to the studio one day last week. Parker had a large black leather portfolio with him that he said used to be his dad's, I believe. I thought that was sweet.


The artist said he took some courses at Kutztown University but didn't get a degree. He's been taught some, but mostly he draws in a style reminiscent of '60s-era posters with the trip factor high. The young artist has talent and drive but like most of us he hasn't got a clue about marketing his art. He's been giving it away. (image is detail from a poster he made for his friends, the band Complex. He showed me a bunch of posters he made free for the band when they played at places like the Khyber and the TLA. Parker's also in a band but I failed to ask the name or whether and where they play.)

Parker's work is all hand drawn, no Photoshop involvement. The materials he uses are watercolor, graphite, gouache and "Pro white" (a kind of better, easier to handle White Out pen, he said). He works the pieces over long periods of time and showed me several things that had been started a while ago and would be finished some day.

I think Parker's sense of play is great and that the his over-the-top everything and the kitchen sink world, full of mystery and a fascination with the dark side is in tune with today. I hope he can get a grip and start selling some work because it's good; he's serious; and he's hard-working.
(here's a piece called "Octopus's Garden." He's giving it to his nephew.)
parker, dave

permanent link   roberta 10:50 AM
Comments? Let us know.