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Posted by roberta

artblog New York correspondent Brent Burket and Baltimore ionarts blogger Mark Barry both emailed to tell us how hot Philly was today. Like we don't know. No, no, they meant the two art reviews in the NY Times. Here Roberta Smith likes Richard Pettibone at the ICA. And here Ken Johnson likes Poussin at the PMA. They should come see our galleries too once in a while. Hello? We have great galleries here.
barry, mark

Barry's got a new post at ionarts today speaking of today and hot. Here. In which he strolls through the upper reaches of Manhattan and sees some good stuff, has some sticker shock and gets some rude treatment. The best steer is to Elizabeth Heybert's post-mortem photos at Edwin Houk Gallery. Here's what he said:

An amazing and bizarre exhibit of African American funereal imagery, by Elizabeth Heyert, at Edwin Houk Gallery. If you're white and have never had the privilege of attending such a sendoff, this could be a place to start. We white people don’t grieve and celebrate anywhere near this, and that’s too bad. James Earl “Jay Mae” Jones, born September 1982, died March 2004. Dressed in his best white rapper-style jump suit and tilted ball cap, with dollars spilling out of his pockets. Check the site for more images.

(image is from the Houk Gallery website. There's a grid of 17 images. Spooky but sweet. Like those American Girls dolls...only not.)
heyert, elizabeth

permanent link   roberta 2:20 PM
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Posted by roberta

[Ed note: Poet Tom Devaney's post refers to my PW review of the ICA's show "Springtide." See post. Devaney is one of the poets commissioned to write a reponse to the art in "Springtide." His poem was paired with the art of Troy Brauntuch.]
brauntuch, troy
Post from Tom Devaney



Hello, thank you for your thoughtful article about the Springtide exhibit. I enjoyed it and your comments about my poem and Troy's work very much. As it turns out, I didn't choose, or know which image the ICA planned to use for the broadside. I looked at dozens of pieces by Troy, but really desired not to illustrate his work as much as create something of my own, exploring themes we both have in common: memory, lingering images, and loss, and love as you correctly point out. One of the things that struck me about Troy's work is how he uses figurative images in
sometimes non-figurative ways, which is a characteristic of some artists (including him) associated with the "'70s Picture Show" in NYC. When I was writing my poem one of the ICA curators gave me Troy's email, but I decided against writing him and to have my relationship be with his art. I like the image on the ICA website that goes with my poem more than the image used in the broadside. With thanks and best.

[Ed. note: I agree. I like that image too, pictured above, Troy Brauntuch's "Emily's Coat on Black Table." What's on the broadsheet is an image of a full-length fur coat standing tall as if on a hangar. It's a less evocative and edgy image than this one.]

--Tom Devaney is a poet and Penn Writing Fellow in the Critical Writing Program, University of Pennsylvania. See his homepage for more. Read his "Springtide" poem, "The Car, a Window, and World War II" here.
devaney, tom

permanent link   roberta 8:37 AM
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Posted by roberta

[Ed. note: Artist Ben Will wrote to us recently to comment on "The Lost Meeting" up at Abington. He gave it a kind of thumbs up/thumbs down rating -- project with problems but it's good to take risks. And ended with a comment about Philadelphia being a "somewhat critically lazy city" and one in need of riskier and larger projects. That piqued my interest, so I asked the artist to expand on his comment and here's what he wrote. It's food for thought.]

Post by Ben Will

Two of the galleries in Philadelphia that I respect the most seem trapped by their own success. Space 1026 and Vox Populi continue to develop a stable of artists that are producing work of high caliber. They both need to push their respective artists outside of the gentle confines of Philadelphia to larger, higher profile markets. However, these institutions have deficiencies that continue to plague their exhibition programs here.
will, ben

Vox and the curatorial hand

Vox Populi has cultivated an environment that, at first glance, reminds one of any commercial gallery in Chelsea or the East End. This is no small feat for a collective. To be able to maintain an atmosphere of professionalism continually for years is commendable. However, upon further investigation the lack of curatorial decisions especially during the member exhibitions is disheartening. As a viewer, I am continually confronted by three or four separate shows within one modest space. It seems that no thought went into why these artists should be showing together. The work ends up being devalued by conflicting ideologies around the next corner. While I am told that this space functions without a fulltime curatorial presence, democratic artist-run exhibitions rarely produce the kind of thought provoking shows that this city is sorely in need of. (image is a video piece by Kim Collmer at Vox's "Point of View." Here's Libby's post for more.)
collmer, kim

While I am writing this I have just seen the "Point of View" exhibition at Vox. I found this exhibition much more intelligible than others I have seen. Visually, the work functioned beautifully together. The exhibition, as a whole, was consistent and interesting and without the philosophical juxtapositions and confrontations that mar some Vox exhibitions. However, the title and stated impetus for the exhibition leave much to be desired. I don’t think there is more of a trite phrase in art than point of view. I may be one of the few people that actually care about this sort of thing but throw me a bone. (image is installation shot from recent group exhibit "Voxennial" at Vox Populi. Floor piece by James Dillon and Nick Paparone)
dillon, james and paparone, nick
I implore the artists of Vox to place more of an emphasis on curating exhibitions so that the organization you have created will become more of the heavyweight I expect it could be. Maybe it’s time to change that charter I’ve heard so much about.


Curating in the wild at Space 1026

Space 1026 has a slightly different problem. While riding high off of recent press coverage and out of town exhibitions, I think this collective is getting lazy. ‘1026ers’ is a mess of an exhibition. It is a jumbled non-installation of work that does not function together. I felt as though if I squinted, held up my hands to block out the extraneous noise of the separate pieces of art, I might have been able to see what the work actually could do. (image is installation shot of current members group show at Space 1026. See Libby's postfor more.)

The exhibition as a whole looks like a store (place for shameless commerce) that in no way references Claes Oldenburg or Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, three artists who also addressed the idea of art in relation to consumerism, shopping, etc. and who did it much better in their projects.

It fails visually and demeans the work of all the artists. It also appears to lack any critical reasoning whatsoever. In fact, I can find no reason for this exhibition other than to fill space in an empty slot on an exhibition schedule.


I believe that a curatorial presence is sorely needed to focus the energy and intelligence of the work into a cohesive exhibition. Summer is a safe season to present exhibitions that are far more experimental. However, this collective seems more interested in patting itself on the back than challenging itself and its viewers. (image is previous installation at Space 1026 -- which welcomes installation art. This one was by the collective Paper Rad.)

I hope that these institutions will continue to flourish. But, It is the responsibility of the members of these collectives to take stock of their respective institutions to ensure that stagnancy and complacency do not take hold.

--Ben Will is a Philadelphia artist and one of the co-curators of "Philadelphia Cheek" at Seraphin Gallery. Here's Libby's post on Cheek and mine.

permanent link   roberta 8:01 AM
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Posted by roberta

Chris of Zeke's Gallery, who's organizing an art blogging panel discussion up in Montreal in September emailed just now to let us know about the thing and to say we were on something called Anna's grid. Now i know there's only one Anna in the art blogosphere and that's Anna Conti. So I went to her blog, Big Crow, and sure enough there it is, a serendipitous and highly funny grid of the mugs of 36 artbloggers. Libby and I are there, as is J.T. Kirkland (thinking about art), Tyler Green (MAN) , Anna herself (Big Crow), Martin Bromirski (anaba), James Wagner (James Wagner) Joy Garnet (Newsgrist),Carolyn Zick (Dangerous Chunky), Carol Es, Mark Barry, Franklin Einspruch, John Perreault, Cynthia King, Terry Teachout, Todd Gibson, Sarah Hromack
Cinque Hicks and more (the ones I named are the ones whose blogs I know). About half. Boy do I feel out of it.
conti, anna
The virtuoso feat of grabbing photos from google and making them into a grid of hot-linked images is so labor-intensive I can't imagine it. But I love the idea of outing the writers most of whom are usually completely invisible (and maybe with good reason...do we skew um, old, or what?)

permanent link   roberta 8:32 PM
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Posted by libby

While I was in New York last weekend, I stopped to visit artist Lenore Malen, whose show at Slought Foundation about Mesmerism and people's search for cures at the fictitious New Society for Universal Harmony inspired this post from me here and this response from Frank Bramblett here.
malen, lenore
Malen's "history" of the society, its members, and the cures is now available in book form!

While I was visiting, I saw this picture on the wall from an older book of hers, "Map," also related to animal magnetism. I was enchanted by the image of a man suddenly inverted by magnets-with extra-terrestrial-origins as he walked down a New York City street. I was also enchanted by the neon frame.

permanent link   libby 3:01 PM
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Posted by roberta

From the better late than never department, here's my piece in this week's Weekly, accompanied by a few photos I grabbed from the ICA's website. Here's Libby's post on "Springtide" for more on the show.

"Spring" It On
An emotional show at the ICA melds visual art and poetry.


The all-star group exhibit "Springtide" at the Institute of Contemporary Art is dark and taciturn. The show's artists-Louise Bourgeois, Troy Brauntuch, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Patty Chang and Erick Swenson-deliver messages on the edge of despair with depictions of animals and humans in peril, and of earthly beings reduced to relics of morbid curiosity.
(top image, Louise Bourgeois, Page from "Ode â l'Oubli (Ode to Forgetfulness)" (detail), 2004, Hand-sewn and constructed cloth with lithography and digital printing, 10 3/4 x 13 1/4" bound book, Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery)

"Springtide" is a gush of emotion comparable to that of a teen discovering Sylvia Plath or Kurt Cobain. After viewing this death-fascinated exhibit, a viewer needs the reassurance of a strong cup of coffee and a glimpse of young lovers hand in hand.

The ICA's curating staff organized the show jointly, and the committee looked at more than 80 artists' works before selecting this particular group. In a nice stroke of ancillary programming, the museum also commissioned five poets to each write a response to a work in the show. The resulting poems-by Tom Devaney, Nick Flynn, Alan Gilbert, Sharon Mesmer and Susan Stewart-are lively, elegant and readable.

Here the poetry, which viewers take home on free posters from the show, gets the last word. The vernacular voices of the poets lift the chill experience of the exhibition and bring it into the realm of casual dialogue. The subject matter becomes accessible instead of forbidding.

I don't mean to convey a battle between art and poetry where poetry wins. In the way that Sir John Tenniel's illustrations weave themselves into the fabric of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the poems here interlock with the art. They're the storytellers around the campfire that weave a spell of words to go with the hallucinations in the flames.

(image, Springtide installation. photo by Aaron Igler. Right background, Patty Chang, "Losing Ground," 2001, video projection; left background, Berlinde De Bruychere, Les Deux, 2001, Polyester, iron, skin of horses, 125 x 134 x 110 inches; foreground, Erick Swenson, "Untitled," 2004. Polyurethane resin, acrylic paint, MDF, polystyrene, 276 x 174 x 23.5 inches)

Tom Devaney's "The Car, a Window, and World War II" is the poem that differs most radically from its art source, Troy Brauntuch's black-on-black drawing Untitled (Fur #2). Devaney's poem voices an anger and confusion not implied by Brauntuch's art. The poem is tetchy and argumentative, while Brauntuch's drawing of a woman's full-length fur coat is dreamy and speculative.

The two come together in a kind of surreal theatricality that evokes loss, love and heartbreak. As with the other poems, Devaney's sheds light on the art and provides a possible (though not the only) way of viewing it.

A friend invited me to a poetry reading at my neighborhood library recently. We went not knowing what to expect and found that more than 50 people turned up on the rainy Monday night, and most of them were poets themselves. Sixteen people read poems at the open mike, and all but one or two were quite good.

I've been wishing for art to take back its place in people's hearts after years of self-imposed exile in the chill lands of abstraction, conceptualism and minimalism. But there's already an art form that's participatory and speaks to people-and never went away.

Poetry requires only a pencil and paper and the will to communicate. With poetry slams and neighborhood poetry groups everywhere, it seems verse is being written by everyone and appreciated widely these days.

Perhaps poetry will lead people back to art. It certainly can help, as it does with this exhibit. The "Springtide" poets will read at the ICA tonight at 7 p.m. [Ed. note: the poets read last night, Wed. July 13.]

"Springtide"
Through July 31. Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St. 215.898.5911. www.icaphila.org

The poems








ICA has the five poems online here.

Here's an excerpt from one,
"The Car, a Window, and World War II" by tom devaney
It's the last stanza.

.....
Ask yourself this question:
Does silence have to mean a lack of sound?
I hate the lack of sound myself, though crave the silence.
Yesterday, three people were shot at a check-point.
The difference between a moment of silence
and a decade of silence.
A lone piano plays into our daily commute.
Gravel, pretzel bits, a penny on the floor. VACUUM:
Fifty Cents.
Sonic Youth behind another pane of glass, glazed.
They didn't invent flesh as material, only the name:
"Adaptation Studies."
The light through the painted window
becomes part of the notes on the page: pink and perfect
in the here and now of the there and then.
Trace the tire marks, the fuel leak on the carpet,
call them "relics."
She was emphatic: "I don't read the quotes, I skip them."
A statement which clearly gave her a lot of satisfaction.
This was years ago, hence the spaces, hence the space.

(image is Troy Brauntuch, Untitled (Emily's coat on black table), 2005, Conte on cotton, 40 x 50 inches.)
bourgeois, louise
sketches
It's not just gas prices. Beginning Aug. 1, entrance fees at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (www.philamuseum.org) will go up. The new rate for adult admission to the PMA will be $12 (up from $10). Student admission goes to $8, and senior admission increases to $9 (both are now $7). The Sunday pay-as-you-wish policy continues, as does free admission for children 12 and under. Members still get in free, and there's no charge for those who wish only to shop in the gift shop or eat in the restaurant or cafeteria. >> You thought painting and photography were at odds? Think again. The Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the oldest photography club in the U.S., has joined with the Plein Air Artists for a joint exhibition of photography and painting at the Plastic Club (247 S. Camac St. 215.545.9324) through Aug. 7. Work is on view Wednesday evenings from 5 to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m. Want to paint outside with the Plein Air Artists? It's free to join. Call 215.977.8408. (R.F.)
brauntuch, troy

permanent link   roberta 2:50 PM
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Posted by libby

Space 1026 has a members show up, a sort of warm-up for their gig at the Yerba Buena Art Center (here's more info on that from Roberta in the Philadelphia Weekly), and it's pretty typical Space 1026. In other words, it's tough to see the forest for the trees--or maybe vice versa, if the trees are the works of art and the installation is the conglomerate.
suss, becky
The installation as a whole is a jumble, and the lack of labeling means I couldn't really find my way to the new kids on the block. But there are jewels in there and if you can give the place some patience, you will find them.
perkins, caitlin
Among the highlights are Becky Suss's cheerful houses in the corner of the room that morph into Caitlin Perkins' wallpapery interior with deer head and all. I also loved the drawings, especially the one with the drawn frame around it.
woodward, ben

Ben Woodward's ink drawing reminded me of Native American stretched deer skin paintings. It also had a homey quality, what with the laundry and all, and the spin-around perspective means the laundry is defying gravity--unless you spin the piece around. Either way, creatures and things are standing on their heads. I'm reminded of an old Japanese map with multiple orientations I saw at the Rosenbach Collection (see post).
rywelski, liz

Liz Rywelski's explorations of patterns have blossomed into romantic portraits covered with the stuff, by some magic trick the portrait not breaking down amidst the details. I'm not sure what's up with the deliberately dirty-drawing technique, but I'm still captivated.

There's lots more to look at if you can keep focus, some of it really great, some not.

Others in the show include Max Lawrence with his resin-layered paintings, Thom Lessner with his fan-worship of Van Halen, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Aryon Hoselton, Rachel Sten, Adam Crawford, Rachel Vittorelli, Clint Woodside, Courtney Dailey, Matt Kosoy, Melissa Kramer, Jake Henry, Jeff Weisner, Jessie Goldstein and Francesca Gangi.

permanent link   libby 9:10 PM
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Posted by libby

The show "Point of View" at Vox Populi this month is about landscape, but not necessarily landscape as we know it. Rather, the artists in the show use new materials, break out of the picture frame, and just rethink the angle they take on the world around them (left, "Under a River Bend" by Sarah Wayland-Smith).
wayland-smith, sarah
Vox Director Yana Balson, who curated the show, brought in 10 emerging artists from Wisconsin, California, Germany, Philadelphia, and a bunch from New York, a nice way to reinforce the Philadelphia's connection to the rest of the art world.
balson, yana
The show had a number of powerhouse pieces, including Andrea Loefke's installation and John Rappleye's drawings, both in the front gallery.
loefke, andrea
Loefke's installation balances a tension between the perfection of a suburban scene with a sense of danger. It's a miniature world where the perfect green grass lawn, up on a pedestal, has a white picket fence that is falling apart. It's a land of multiple houses with no straight edges that are also creatures with googly red dots for eyes. The sky above explodes in a comic book thought bubble and the flat clouds move forward from drawn space into real space, their blue edges heightening the unreality of the flatness. And then there's the pink string forming links between the sky and the sparkly land (right, Loefke at the opening night, towering over her untitled installation).
collmer, kim
Like so many of the pieces in the show, this is an imaginary landscape, a sort of storybook land that's open to all kinds of interpretations. Between the perspective of looking down on the tiny homes, and the eyes of the homes, and the sky peeking out of the explosion on the wall, I get a surveillance theme, but Loefke, who was at the opening talk, spoke of the pink strings as a connection between the city and the spiritual sky, and the blue edges of the clouds as a way to undercut the danger.

The piece is very open, great to look at and a magical place.

I also liked moving an installation that's even a smaller scale than a table-top train set installation down to the floor, and the way it holds its space by the pink-string connections to the wall. Very nice. Very interesting.

Loefke, by the way, is a German native who now lives and works in New York City.
rappleye, john

The drawings, black and white with just touches of color, by John Rappleye also have a magical quality and a storybook quality. The landscape they imagine is a place abundant with creatures that require looking to see some of the time. It's close to reality but not quite, the trees out of control like baobabs that turn into elephants. The plants are odd. There seem to be tubes providing some form of life support like air or food. Rappleye's drawing and brushwork are wows that hold on to the traditions while taking a trip into jungle-y spaces of the mind and making time travel into deep space (left, "In the Tomble This Nature Abounds).
tobin, maggie

Maggie Tobin's use of synthetic goatskin stretched over a mirror creates a luminous backdrop that reminds me of Daguerrotypes. The paintings themselves, spare, dark tree limbs against that luminous sky go in several mutually contradictory directions at once--Asian nature painting, man's place in nature represented by the reflection of the viewer in the sky, and the decorative quality of that background. The branches become tangled force fields (right, one of Tobin's paintings of tree limbs).
ganser, julie

The sense of layering also comes up in paintings by Wisconsonite Julie Ganser. (I mentioned the Wisconsin connection in honor of Roberta, of course. As for Brooklyn connections, in honor of me, there are too many, so I'll pass). Ganser uses lucite and synthetic acrylic stretched over it to create layers of space in her rather abstract paintings. The colors sparkle, and the layers create a shadow box effect. One piece has faux architectural perspective--a sort of grid--behind an island of cartoony gesture. Another piece is watery and deep (left, "Dark Spectre, Receding Grid").
oppenheimer, sarah

That urge to 3-D representations of landscape comes up also in the charming aerial pondscapes from Sarah Wayland-Smith. They are topographical maps of the bottoms of imagined waterways, viewed from beneath--looking like layers of foamcore painted sky blue. It's nice to have them serve as blue clouds and bits of sky hanging above. Wayland-Smith also brings in three dimensions in her delicate, cut-paper layered landscape. The reductive paper shapes, the carefully chosen colors, the layers embedded in stacked framework in "Reflections on Water 2" give a sense of depth beneath a surface and preserve the traditional rectangle while subverting it by pulling it away from the wall, penetrating it with holes and taking advantage of shadows cast behind (a river seen from beneath at the top of the post, and right, "Reflections on Water 2").
schmidt, cecilia

The show also includes set-up scenarios between toy-like animals in the woods, created and photographed by Cecilia Schmidt and a video of cheery aliens exploring a girly version of a sci-fi Versailles garden space by Kim Collmer, which made me think of Matthew Ritchie without the testosterone (left, a still from Collmer's "Silver Seeds").
wegman, laura jo
Also there was a hole in the wall by Sarah Oppenheimer that questions the visual function of the gallery wall as a blind backdrop at the same time that it questions the structural integrity behind it and raises issues about the packaging of art; ultra-decorative patterns by Laura Jo Wegman that made me think of the works of two Vox regulars--Kate Abercrombie and Amy Adams for floral profusion meeting over-production; and digitally standardized landscape photographs based on the desire of tourists for souvenir pictures, by Justyna Badach, the lone Philadelphian in the mix. Badach teaches at Drexel University.
badach, justyna

permanent link   libby 10:25 AM
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Posted by roberta

I'm sad to report that Brian Wagner, found-object sculptor and media arts faculty at Drexel, died suddenly at his home Friday. Wagner, 59, was suffering from cancer. He was a gentle soul and a gifted artist and someone I profiled for an article at the Weekly early on in my art writing career when he put his "5,000 Sticks" sculpture in the old trolley barn on 41st and Haverford in West Philadelphia.

Mark Campbell, a friend of Wagner's emailed to let me know the sad news as did Christine Cassidy, another friend. Campbell said there will be an event tonight, Tuesday, July 12, for Brian, arranged by the artist's brother. That's at 8313 Germantown Ave at 7:00 p.m. Campbell said he is working with Joe Gregory and Blaise Tobia to organize a memorial event for Wagner. I'll let you know when the date and time are set.

Here are some things Libby and I have written about Wagner and his terrific work. It's a sad day today.

Sticks and Photos
artblog, April 27, 2005
post by Roberta


Brian Wagner's "Accumulation" at Drexel's Pearlstein Gallery is a long-overdue solo event for the found-object sculptor and Drexel prof. My quickie editor's picks review is here. I can't get enough of this work which subverts the utilitarianism of such tools as brooms and rulers to make them into metaphorical objects that tell tales of community and interconnections and time lines. Here I'll run some images and say I have a soft spot for Wagner because he was the first artist's feature story I wrote for PW back in 1999. I didn't have a clue how to write a feature story and spent much time following Wagner around as he was putting together a show of his 5,000 Sticks. He was most generous and is a gentle soul.
wagner, brian


Top two images are the 5,000 Sticks here arranged in a kind of "u" shape at Drexel. Wagner had many assistants help him put together the piece. He said it took less than a day.


Woven tape measures...


Sticks in vitrines and rulers on the walls. Also, a painting with stick imagery.

Summer of shovel love
artblog, May 27, 2004
post by Roberta

Libby told you about the Shovel show in her great post and I'll not be redundant here, only mention I loved the show, too.



It was great to see Brian Wagner's collection of sticks in the light of day once more. Wagner, who collects used broom and mop and shovel handles then occasionally hauls them out and stacks them -- freely without armature or fasteners -- in big haystack-like arrangements that tower in the air and miraculously don't fall down, is one of Philadelphia's many undersung art heroes.



Wagner's stack of 950 sticks -- yellow as the summer sun -- is culled from a greater assortment of some 5,000 the artist owns. I saw the 5,000-stick stack in a West Philadelphia trolley barn a few years back (1999 I think) and it was a wonder.

I wrote a story about Wagner, a Drexel prof, and his sticks for PW but unfortunately the paper's online archives don't go back that far so I can't link it. Several videographers, including Highwire's John Van Zandt, have videotaped Wagner's sticks going up -- usually a group activity requiring ladders and scaffolding. Van Zandt's was playing on a video monitor in Highwire.

I have a copy of David Miller's short video "5,000 Sticks," which I played this morning for a stroll down memory lane. The image above is my photo of the last shot in Miller's piece -- it's the completed stack in the West Philly shed. You can't see it clearly but this thing had a tornado-like torque, it's top seeming to spiral up and out for liftoff.

Digging it
artblog, May 24, 2004
post by Libby

Brian Wagner's yellow version of his sticks-meet-gravity sculpture, stretches the shovel idea to tools with long handles. Suddenly, pushing the dirt with a mop or a broom seems not that different from shoveling.


Accumulations: The Art of Brian Wagner
Philadelphia Weekly, April 27, 2005
by Roberta Fallon

Brian Wagner, a gem of an underexposed local artist, is having a mini-retrospective at Drexel's Leonard Pearlstein Gallery through May 5. The 59-year-old-whose freestanding broomstick accumulation 5,000 Sticks holds the fort in the gallery's lobby-is a magician with found objects such as rulers, which he turns into metaphors for self-measurement. The same goes for sticks, which he turns into statements about community and labor. Wagner's pieces are so simple they seem inevitable. Like the Slinky, the hula hoop and the yo-yo, the artist's inventions feel as though they come from our collective subconscious. I met Wagner, an associate professor in Drexel's design program, in '99. A gentle soul with a quiet sense of humor and a found-object sculptor's nose for good trash, Wagner lives amid his assemblages like a shaman with his totems. In this exhibit Blaise Tobia's color photographs of the artist's house give you a glimpse into his life. Wagner, who was beaming at his opening in a red jacket and red-and-white striped tie, is battling cancer. I hope his doctors can work some of their own magic on him.


One Man's Kindling..
5,000 Sticks is more than just a bonfire waiting to happen
Philadelphia Weekly, Nov. 10, 1999
by Roberta Fallon


Some pairings are just meant to be. Pie and ice cream. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Brian Wagner and 5,000 Sticks. The 25-foot, 2-ton installation was built without the aid of fasteners by Wagner, an artist, collector and amateur archaeologist. Currently on display in an old Septa trolley barn in West Philadelphia, the free-standing work weds simple material (wooden sticks) with a simple, almost child-like idea. it looks like a haystack Leaning Tower of Pisa -- a little scary and puzzling, yet somehow inevitable.

The sticks are from discarded brooms, shovels and mops Wagner has collected around Philadelphia for 10 years. He cuts the once-useful ends to match the factory ends. These over-size Pick-Up Sticks have a homey, beat-up look, and they boast some wacky colors -- pink and green being the standouts. They also look like they're ready for a bonfire, which is one reason the piece is indoors instead of outside.

A combination of gravity and over-and under-weaving of the layered sticks holds everything together. In a physics-as-art lesson, Wagner -- an assistant professor in the College of Design Arts at Drexel University --explains that when the woven mound of sticks is around 75-strong, it gains so much weight that it might as well be a single object.

"It's like a rigid 3-D weaving -- really like a fiber," he says. "It's pretty strong."

This is the eighth Wagner installation of its kind. His first, "Kablish 1," at Rosemont College, was made up of 500 sticks. "'Kablish'" refers to an accumulation of natural material pushed into a pile by floodwater of wind," Wagner says. "It's Celtic or Welsh, but I never did find it in a dictionary, so now I use numbers to name the pieces."

Since then, Wagner has taken his wood work to Western Illinois University (2,000 sticks in 1996) and to Delaware State University (2,000 sticks in 1994). Two years ago, a group of 1,000 sticks found its way to Nexus in Old City. (Wagner was an early member of that artists' cooperative.)

For the current installation, Wagner has chosen his most novel location. A formidable space, the trolley barn is owned by Michael Graves, an artist and friend of Wagner's who hopes to continue using it as a place to show large art installations.

"5,000 Sticks" is more complex than the others," Wagner says. "It's the largest and the most ambitious -- and the tallest. It has also been up the longest -- since August 13."

Wagner came through art school at the University of Pennsylvania during the minimalist '70s. And he is especially into the ritual behind the work. The growth of the collection is a big thing, but so is the community of friends who collect sticks for him and participate in the building process.

"I've had children helping me, and college presidents," says Wagner. "The 5,000 Sticks was built with the help of 12 friends and took two days to construct."

Wagner used to be a painter. And even then, sticks were a kind of natural motif. There are stick-like marks or strokes in his layered, color field paintings from 18 years ago. "It was archaeological," he points out. "Some of the paintings got pretty thick. But I was getting tired of painting, and thinking about how I could do this (layering) more three-dimensionally."

Actually, the leap to the sticks was a pretty natural one -- though it might not have seemed so at the time. A serious collector and certified amateurarchaeologist who belongs to numerous local and regional archaeology societies, Wagner is an artist whose quest for materials has teken him far beyond the Home Depot.

That said, "5,000 Sticks" is not about recycling. It's about history and tools, and the imprint of time and use. As one artist noted when he saw the work, it's about the 10,000 hands that used the 5,000 sticks. "People ask why I don't just get a grant and buy some new brooms," Wagner says. "But I think the signs of use are significant."

Wagner's love of building and collecting goes back to his childhood. "My one grandfather was a carpenter and the other was a machinist," he says. "And I was hammering away at age 4."

Wagner's personal collections -- arrowheads, string, sticks, wooden rulers and yardsticks, glass jars and aquariums -- sit side-by-side throughout his house, both as a display and a storage strategy. Lately, he has been playing with his rulers, using a Xerox transfer technique to create a whole new generation of subversive, evil-twin rulers, which look like the real thing but are totally dysfunctional. Yet beneath the playfulness, there's an earnest quality to Wagner's work that is endearing.

Sometime after the end of November, "5,000 Sticks" will be taken down, crated and stored until the next time. But Wagner will continue gathering, grouping and finishing discarded sticks. So feel free to bring him a few when you get the chance.

(top image is Wagner in 1999 in the photo for this article, bottom image is the photo as it appeared on the cover of the PW A and E section.)

permanent link   roberta 3:27 PM
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Posted by libby

Revenge of the couch potato


I'm still smarting from Tony Oursler's social criticism in "Climaxed," one of his two installations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I was going to dismiss before I even saw them (The lesson here is that images of art work lie). But then Murray and I saw them and remained engrossed in both of the pieces for quite a long time. So there. They are worth creeping around and finding in that step-child gallery of contemporary art (right, a detail of "Climaxed," the orange flames extending around three walls).

"Climaxed," a projected face floating in a room animated by a projected explosion, has the mesmerizing quality of lava lamps. The voice speaks in slightly garbled tongues that include such phrases as, "Boom," "I'm the best motion picture" and "I've got you all in a coma and you don't get that time back." And the eyes operate independently from one another.

The face is on a shape that's potato like, and it's suggesting to us couch potatoes that we need to wean ourselves from the screens, small and large. The googly, goofy eyeballs seem to have watched far too much tv and far too many movies. Of course this is somewhat disingenuous given that "Climaxed" too is a video entertainment, explosive violence and all.

I'm not sure why we stood there and watched this for as long as we did. The words were funny and hard to hear, so we waited for more, straining to decode. But ultimately, I think it was a little of couch-potato-ism that kept us there. All that was missing was the couch.

Installation a clef


As much as I enjoyed "Climaxed," it has not quite as much charm as the money shot over in the large installation, "Studio: Seven Months of My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some)," which was inspired by Gustave Courbet's "The Artist's Studio: A real allegory of a seven year phase in my artistic and moral life." (image left, a view of the right side of "Studio," the arrow pointing to my favorite piece within the piece).

And the money shot is...

..."Jelloid," which to me looked like a giant green chocolate chip cookie, except the chips were mouths and eyes. The mouths puckered now and then, the eyes opened and shut and rolled, etc. The in-between spaces also were in constant motion and I just couldn't take my eyes off of it.

I took it as a stand-in for the artist, all eyes.


The studio itself looks like a hodgepodge, but its individual parts are fun--gossipy bits of information about the artist and his life. You can read the titles of his stack of reading--from "Parkett #47" to "Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Museum." You can get a glimpse, in video, of his family. And you can get a glimpse of the visitors to his studio, with and without their affectations and schtick. You can even see bits of art work from others there, decorating the studio walls and floor, including a couple of models from Rem Koolhaas in the above left image. (right image, view of the other side of "Studio".)
oursler, tony
The good news for the gossips amongst us is that the exhibit includes a chart that identifies the visitors, who include Robert Altman, John Baldessari, David Bowie, Leonard Nemoy, Thomas Schutte, Diane Thater, John Waters and Lawrence Weiner.

All of these details and bits of information and pictures and labels kept us engrossed and puzzling and exploring the space. Ultimately, it seemed like an archive of life in the artist's studio and in some ways it felt like we were paying him a visit, looking at his art, checking out the titles in his library. We also found it entertaining as a roman a clef but lacking the poetry of a coherent piece of art. As an art lover, I'd have to give it three paintbrushes out of five. But as a fan--of celebrities and of Oursler--I'd still have to give this five stars out of five.

permanent link   libby 10:14 PM
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Posted by libby

An article I wrote on artist Chuck Close's visit to the University of Pennsylvania is now online in the Pennsylvania Gazette (image, a Close self-portrait).
close, chuck
Here's the first paragraph:

Artist Chuck Close is known for two things—his enormous portraits of people scrutinized from hair to pore and ear to ear, and his severely disabled body. But he’s still making art—great art; and in life, he has taken his disabilities and turned them into a source of power. His trademark billboard-sized mug shots each shock the eye with their newness, their merger of astounding, abstract technical feats with the ordinariness of photographic detail.

Read the rest of it here.

permanent link   libby 3:56 PM
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Posted by libby

Sooo cute. There was everyone and his brother who were in a 2-mile radius of these plastic elephants snapping away with the cameras. Baby with baby elephant. Girl with mama elephant (papa elephant? who's to know?) Husband patting trunk. Wife leaning in, grinning.
ban, chinatsu

That's how New Yorkers and tourists responded to Chinatsu Ban's two pieces at the southeast corner of Central Park, a large elephant, "VWX Yellow Elephant Underwear," and a small one "HIJ Kiddy Elephant Underwear."

The sculptures were put up with support from the Public Art Fund as part of a show, "Little Boy," organized by the Japan Society and curated by Takashi Murakami, based on hot hot hot Japanese art and cartoons that conflate what's high art and popular art.

But like most of the public, I saw only the elephants, because they were on my route.


More in the "Hello, Kitty" tradition of ultra-cuteness ("kawaii" is the cute-word in Japanese), the elephants do not have the edge that Nara's naughty but cute little girls do (left, a Nara girl, who even in a snit remains cute).

But neither are these behemoths--who are smaller, cuter, more sanitary, less smelly than real elephants--just empty plastic shapes. The larger one has dropped a load which is shaped like a Mister Softy twirl crossed with stacking rings (also no smell). And judging by the titles, the two are modeling cute cute underwear, the larger elephant's for example patterned with self-referential elephant faces and bikini bottoms for men and women. Plus they've got pink pink toenails.


These elephants are beauty victims.

I could read all kinds of things in to this about complete denial of the animal in all of us and the beauty and apparel industry. But the website literature states kawaii is about a Japanese self-sanitization effort after WWII.

But watch out, America, metro-sexuals and "Nip and Tuck" are also part of a larger effort to expunge blame for being human. Hello, "kawaii," because we are Japan and Japan is us.

permanent link   libby 11:30 AM
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Posted by roberta

The camera is my buddy and my outlet this week. And I'm deep in flickr-land uploading images. They're pretty, and I'm going to post them here as flashes of color and Midwest exotica. All the images are on my flickr site and I'll post links later tonight to the pages where you can see them bigger if you'd like. It's a travel day for me. More postings tomorrow (I hope).

[Ed. note: this post has been updated now and you can see the images full sized by clicking on the word "bigger" below the image.]


Here's a shot taken from the plane above Philadelphia's smog last Wednesday. The air below was thick and hazy. See bigger.


Somewhere over Ohio or Michigan the sunset separated into bands of color. See bigger.


OK, so you know me and birds. Somebody is feeding goldfinches outside my mom's kitchen window. See bigger.


The money shot. The Calatrava building (addition to Milwaukee Art Museum) I can't get enough of. See bigger. I'll have something on the "Cut/Film" exhibit later this week. Synopsis: Christian Marclay rules.


The sky was an electric blue all day. In fact the weather has been very well behaved in Milwaukee. See bigger.
fallon, roberta

permanent link   roberta 9:52 AM
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Posted by libby

For the perfect view of Manhattan on a perfect summer day, Murray and I looked at the Sol Lewitt "Splotches" up on the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until Oct. 30-- and got a good laugh (right, "Splotch #15," acrylic on fiberglass).




lewitt, sol

Lewitt's pieces have a cinematic quality, sort of Tim Burton's Gotham gets a coat of paint. The black version puts the goth back in Gotham and brings up memories of Bald Mountain in "Fantasia" while overwhelming Banks Violette's little black mountains. And the white one is Cleopatra's Needle, not to mention a good prop for King Kong. All of them served as swell photo opportunities. People were snapping eachother like mad, as if they were taking pictures of Baby Patsy with Big Bird at Sesame Place (left, "Splotch #7").


But it's the colored ones, reds, oranges, yellows, blues and greens from the toy factory, that look smashing, their horizonal rhythms challenging their vertical ones for an architectural anti-grid (right, "Splotch #3).

The roof is just the place for them, an imagined, melted skyline in front of the real thing. They are strong enough to assert their own presence without killing the backdrop of the thousands of buildings and tree tops (here's Roberta's post on another Splotch, also perfectly sited, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art).


The Splotches put to shame the nearby "Whirls and Twirls," which blocks any views and seems disspirited and formulaic by contrast (left, "Whirls and Twirls" detail).

If you want to know a little about the process for "Splotches," here's the info at the Met.

permanent link   libby 6:56 PM
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