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Posted by libby

Email from Bill Fisher

Editors: Here's an update about Bill Fisher and Richard Lou's art work removed removed for the offense of suggesting racism still reigns (see previous post).

Hey Roberta and Libby,

Here's an update to the Gainesville Times/AP Report:

08.11.05: The Quinlan Arts Center has notified Richard Lou today by email that their Board of Directors has ordered the immediate removal of the rest of his work (which includes solo work as well as collaborative work involving multiple artists) from the show Celibración, following the Board's removal of his and collaborator Bill Fisher's print-based piece "Missing Stereotypes" before opening night August 4, 2005.

The AP Report illustrates more of the same (not really so) subtle xenophobia, racism and stereotyping at work here ("Jennifer Wilbanks angered Hispanic groups...," "the president of the group Hispanics Across America backed down from his threat...," "Hispanic man...in very broken English...the sweetest things...").

We are very fortunate that the Athens, Ga gallery Athica will be showing the work along with documentation of the Quinlan fiasco. Please see their site for more information on their upcoming show "RACE (Enter Personal Politics)"

Please visit Fisher's website and/or contact Lou (478-445-6088, 478-454-2123) or Fisher (wwfisher@charter.net, 478-457-7286) if you'd like more information. Hope you'll print out the high-res pdf file of Missing Stereotypes for your wall or nearest phone pole, if you like it!

--Richard Lou and Bill Fisher
fisher, billlou, richard

permanent link   libby 2:54 PM
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Posted by roberta

When I wrote about the Getty Center in that previous post I forgot to mention one of the great handouts I picked up. I like to collect things like the family guides to museums and other free hand-outs just to see how the museums are coping with their guests. Are they friendly are they stingy are they loaded with dough. I have to say that The Large Print and Braille Guide to the Getty stopped me in my tracks. It's the classiest free guide I've seen.



The obviously well-produced and expensive piece of take-away information is a consistent part of what is a very classy and well-funded research/education and art center.

On the image (top is the cover) the left beige bar is where the braille dots appear. You can see the cover bigger at my flickr site. And for more on braille publishing see the Braille Institute Press, whose name is listed on the back of the publication, and while it doesn't say so, I'm guessing they co-produced the guide.

Ending transmission.... I'm going to be putting up a few more photo posts...soon I hope...of things I just had to put on my scanbed and share....More coming.
getty

permanent link   roberta 11:27 AM
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Posted by libby

While Zoe Strauss is still my favorite photographer in Philadelphia, as much for her attytood as for her work (see previous post), there's lots of good fish in the sea. So it was certainly worth my while, and it would be worth yours as well, to check out the show of six photographers at Gallery 339, Philadelphia's most ambitious and beautiful new space for seeing photographs.

The intelligence of the show--its breadth of work and how that breadth compared and contrasted with the early color photography in "Mavericks of Color" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see post)--kept my mind clicking.

Sarah Stolfa's portraits in McGlinchey's Bar, from the bartender's vantage point, continue to astound me with their attention to skin and character. An older photograph from this series is also included in the show, and it offers a little lesson in how sharp her more developed technique is in capturing flesh. The older image has a corporate fuzziness and cooler lighting, which is appropriate for a guy dressed in a suit and tie, but obscures the personal detail that the later photographs achieve. Gallery owner Martin McNamara said Stolfa had figured out a better way to capture the light in the dimness of the bar. He mentioned a slower shutter speed but was otherwise a little fuzzy himself on how she did it (top image, "Arpson Bravos," archival pigment print, 23 x 23 inches).

Stolfa, who just graduated from Drexel University's photography program, won a number of awards, including the 2004 New York Times Photography Contest for College Students with this bar series. She has also phogoraphed a series on local boxers.


Another young photographer, Yuji Iwasaki, veers away from the documentary impulse that motivates so many photographers. His color-saturated photos of his own clay sculptures, which look real but dislocated, have a pared-down voluptuousness at the same time as they suggest cartoons and narratives. A hunk of cheese on the stairs moves from one frame to the next in the two-image "AM/PM." A beached seal thumps on a keyboard in "In Tune". Iwasaki, who is Japanese, went to art school in London. The colors alone are riveting (image, "In Tune," C-type print mounted on aluminum, 16.5 x 13.75 inches).


The only black-and-white photographer in the show is Daniel Lobdell, whose triptychs here of bridges and nature remind me of the work local photographer James B. Abbott (see post). The black-and-white suggests the past and a return to the time before color photography was even an option. And the images are of breathtaking beauty, in which the signs of man have not yet spoiled the terrain, but only offer a contrast. What I loved best about these photographs was the way the panoramic triptychs are barely discontinuous, so they jolt with a promise of unity that gets subtly broken. Lobdell has a masters from Tyler (image, "Spanning Structures 04-4-2004/2005", quad-tone print, 30 x 8 inches).


Photojournalist Serge J-F. Levy's work crosses over into the art world from the commercial world of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times and London Sunday Times magazines and Sports Illustrated. Juxtaposition and narrative and an eye for flashes of intense color and shafts of light in the gray urban landscape are what make this street photographer's work catch the eye. The contrast of soccer players in their colorful sportswear playing in a field next to old gravestones, two lit-up figures next to one in shadow, the solitude of a lady in red in a neutral, empty street with a tiny, receding motorcyclist reflected in a car mirror--there's room for storymaking in each of these photos (image, "Soho, NYC," photographic C-print, 20 x 16 inches).


Robert Raczka, who photographs the world around us, seems to be going in a number of directions at once--surprises of scale, surprises of content, shifts in expectation from how we think the world looks to the way the world really looks. Raczka photographs people as well as places. This gasoline tanker coated with snow looks strange and unfamiliar (image, "Gasoline Truck, Meadville, PA," C-type print, 14 x 18 inches).

Raczka is a professor of art and gallery director at Allegheny College.

Levy's and Raczka's work seemed a little more expected (although still engaging) than that of others in the exhibit. Raczka reminded me of Joel Meyerowitz some of the time. And Levy's work is from the Weegee genre. But I liked the work anyway.



Jackie Fugere, a UArts grad now in New York City, creates work with the spin of Victorian weird science. Plus she uses retro illustrational drawings in some of her images. Using metals in a chancy process to create an image about chance and magic, or creating unpredictable photograms also about chance" seems tautological, plus the images have a cobwebby look--"Message" was the most beautiful of the images. Fugere has also won several awards for her work and has just finished a two-year gig with Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA) here (image, "Message," toned silver print--chromoskedasic process, 40 x 30 inches).

Levy is also a CFEVA participant.
stolfa, sarahiwasaki, yujilobdell, danielabbott, jameslevy, sergeraczka, robertfugere, jackie

permanent link   libby 10:05 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Zoe Strauss
[Ed. note: Strauss is replying to yesterday's post by SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios, which, in turn, responded to information in a previous post about Philadelphia LINC.]


Well, as you might guess I must respond to this SterlingKraft melee! First, I must clarify my statements at the LINC meeting... which were not that the soon to be built SterlingKraft Studios would be "too high" in price (I don't even know the price of the SterlingKraft studios yet!), but I was actually responding to a specific amount our mediator had tossed out as hypothetical amount and had said that that price was "too high" for me. I'm sorry about my confusing statement! Of course, now that I am soon to be a fancy thousandaire, I'm renting out the old Spectrum as a studio. Just kidding, folks. [Ed. note: The Spectrum is a sports center, home to Philadelphia teams: lacrosse's Wings, hockey's Phantoms, and soccer's Kixx.]

(photos by Strauss. Wording on top image says "30 and Wharton don't like drug," below is Jehovah's Witnesses.)


Anyway let me recap,

1. I don't know how much the rent at SterlingKraft will be and didn't mean to imply that it would be "too high" and apologize for making an unclear statement.

2. And, yes, I am very excited about SterlingKraft. Who doesn't want great things happening in South Philly?

3. However, as much as I love Passyunk Avenue Revitalization, and do love them, I must take exception to the fact that no one from SterlingKraft or Passyunk Ave. Revitalization contacted me to ask about my statement, which was just one sentence that I would have been very happy to clarify. As you know, I am pretty accessible. My cell phone number is 267-250-4158 and my email is info@zoestrauss.com. If anyone ever has a question for me or wants to discuss something with me, you can always holla at your girl.

--Zoe Strauss, 2005 Pew Fellow, is a regular artblog contributor. See her website and flickr site for more art and her blog for art and commentary.
strauss, zoe

permanent link   roberta 8:48 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Brent Burket

Following Artblog's tip I hopped the ever-aggravating G train Saturday afternoon to see the tiny but rambunctious show, Precious Moments, at Joymore in Williamsburg. I was rewarded for my trouble. In these days of praise for the likes of Jay Leno and President Dumbass it was about time somebody praised the god that has underwhelmed us: Mediocrity. All praise the moderately dark lord.

A photograph by Walead Beshty from his Dead Malls project kicks things off. Another excellent photograph of another bad plan. His piece is a nice contrast to the shiny and glowing altars and videos by Shana Moulton. Her hyper-giddy arrangements of new age paraphernalia and knick-knacks radiate a caustic and desperate vacuity. Having fun yet?

For a little relief there's Brian Belott's photo albums of found photographs. It's not a new idea, but to be quite frank I can't get enough of this stuff. It's the most Warholian thing this side of C-Span. Andy himself used to ask his drug store for pictures that people forgot to pick up. Lately found photographs have been showing up in coffee table books. There's something wrong with that. Belott gets it right though. He places the photos in crappy albums that look like they were found in somebody else's basement. Enshrining them in a format as careless as the pictures themselves gives all involved what they need most: Nothing. (top image is a different Belott book project shown at Canada Gallery. Thanks James Wagner for the image and information)

As much as I enjoyed Bellot's work the real highlight of the show is Philadelphia artist Liz Rywelski. Oh, man. Deep and empty. Her idea is so good it would have killed even if the execution had fallen short. Not to worry. She nails it. Rywelski went to K-Marts around the country to have her portrait taken by the in-store Olan Mills photographers, using a $100 gift card to buy her wardrobe at the Big K. Sharing made-up stories about her life with the store staff she enlisted their help in choosing her "look". By doing this Rywelski addresses the flattening of taste and culture with a sense of sadness, anger, and compassion. The void is not below us. It's right here, in the middle. (image above and next two are Rywelski in the Olan Mills photos installed at Joymore)



In comparison to lesser artists mining a similar vein her deft touch reminds me of David Mamet's exquisitely brutal mirror in contrast with the ham-fisted finger-pointing of Neil LaBute. Like Mamet, Rywelski seems to be saying, "Pay attention. This is who we are, just in case you weren't looking." Also like Mamet, she doesn't quite go so far as to ask, "Now what?" The viewer might walk down that dark hallway on their own, but they'll do so without the bossy insistence of an artist god pushing them along.

This is where compassion enters the room. The image of the artist dressed in a business suit holding a beach ball is wicked and surreal, but it is also touching. I couldn't help but think of the people who believed Rywelski's story that day, how they made the decisions that led to this photo. Not every picture is this internally incongruent, but all the works draw the viewer in like that. How did we get here? This is not my beautiful wife.



Nope. Not at all. She's at home taking pills; chasing the gauzy distance of the middle, far away from the edges of feeling, thought, and memory. These are the things that move us forward as a culture, and they've been bought and sold. The world isn't going to end in fire or ice. It's going to end in a store with low prices and bright lights. At least—thanks to this fine show—we'll have pictures.
belott, brian
[Ed. note: Precious Moments was curated by Josh Kline aka Josh OS (see post and post). Kline often collaborates with Rywelski on projects -- like the Apex Art project they did for the Mauritzio Couldn't be Here show (they did a lecture for the Harrell Fletcher Come Together day]

--Brent Burket, artblog's New York correspondent, is a writer and art collector based in New York. Check out his blog Heart as Arena for more New York art commentary.
rywelski, liz

permanent link   roberta 4:40 PM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Michael Demers and Andrew Stalder, SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios

[Ed. note: This post by refers back to a previous post on the LINC symposium at Fleisher Art Memorial in which there was much talk about affordable artists'live/work spaces in Philadelphia -- or the lack thereof.]



Dear Libby and Roberta,

As loyal readers of the artblog, we were surprised to see the name of our upcoming gallery/studios mentioned in your Monday post about the LINC project. We are in the midst of planning and building the SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios on East Passyunk. I have to say we found it rather dismaying that Zoe Strauss mentioned that she thought our studio prices were "too high." We hope such a statement on Zoe’s part will not scare any of your readers away from the studios or the area.

[Ed. note: Strauss talked at the LINC meeting about the Sterling Project, something in her neighborhood that she is enthusiastic about. Her comment about the rental price being high came in response to a question by the discussion leader.]

We were hoping to explain to you what the studio situation is -- The studios will range from 150 to 215 square feet. Each studio will be completely individual and secure with high speed internet connections, central air and proper ventilation. We will also run a contemporary art gallery on the first floor that will host both local and national shows (and in which the studio artists will have an annual group show).

The impetus for this project came about while looking for studio space in South Philadelphia. As artists, we had a very hard time finding suitable space in our immediate area. We also felt that while there was a need for studios in South Philly, there wasn’t much of art “vibe” happening in our neighborhood either. We thought that the best way to satisfy the artists needs in our part of town plus create some sort of gathering place for artists from around the city, was to build a sort of “hub” in South Philly. We are hoping that the draw of SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios will be a start (although a small one) in that direction.

I suppose the reason for this note is that we hope our project starts off on a good note with the art community in Philadelphia. We are excited about what this could mean for the arts in Philadelphia on both neighborhood- and city-wide levels, and hope that you will be as well. Sincerely,
--Andrew and Michael, SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios


PS. From Michael

I do hope that everyone knows that we did not aim to call into question Zoe or her comments – we really admire her photography and appreciate what she has done for the arts in our area through that work – we just do not want people to be turned off of the studios before they are even built! (image is the floorplan for the studio spaces. you can see it bigger at the gallery's website.)

Regarding the facilities, the SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios are a project created by Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods through its subsidiary, Passyunk Avenue Revitalization, Inc. as part of its overall efforts to revitalize the East Passyunk Avenue commercial district. And the architect firm is local, Vitetta.

Citizens Alliance was looking for a strong anchor for the Avenue, and at the same time wanted to bring a vibrant artistic dimension to that part of town. We were looking for studio space and an artistic dimension to our neighborhood as well – working with Citizens seemed like a perfect match. We all agreed to use the name SterlingKraft as homage to the building that stood on the same spot – the SterlingKraft Photo Lab – and all understood that to make the Gallery and Studios not only a reality but also a viable part of our artistic community we would have to pull out all the stops.

That’s where the amenities come in – the private, secure studios; central heating and air conditioning; high-speed Internet access in every studio (for digital artists and those who like to check their email while working!); as much natural light as possible (yet easily converted to dark space for photographers); sturdy hanging walls (for the painters); access to water and plumbing; a gallery show for the studio artists every year (because the studio artists are absolutely a part of the community, so their work should be shown to that community) – we sat down and made a
list of what we and other artists really wanted and needed in a studio space and figured out how to make that kind of space happen. We did the same thing with the gallery, and of course putting the two together made perfect sense to everyone.

We think that there are artists in the Philadelphia arts-community who want that kind of studio space and who want to see the arts thrive in all parts of the city.
sterlingcraft studios
We have a website with some preliminary blueprints and info for both the gallery and studios (see link above) There is not much info on the site yet, but as the building gets underway and the architects give us some better images we will be sure to have them put online and let artblog know of them.

(image at top is a new architectural rendering for the SterlingKraft Gallery and Studios. The gallery on the first floor with the separate studio entrance on the right. The second and third floors are the studios.)
linc

permanent link   roberta 9:11 AM
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Posted by roberta

Here's a quick update from the PMA. I was there looking at the "Mavericks of Color Photography" show -- excellent!! -- see Libby's post for more. My review will be in next week's Weekly.

Where's the local talent?
dubuffet, jean
The big news is that the local presence in the Contemporary Galleries (first Tristin Lowe and then Edna Andrade) is now gone. See previous post for more. Let's hope it's temporary. I am very territorial I realize but I am truly committed to the idea of local art interwoven in the big concrete-floor galleries of the Contemporary wing (not the hallway outside the Video Gallery which is where is usually appears).

Apart from that, the museum's got a French masters' drawing exhibit up at the moment which I flew through and don't have much to say about except that for me Seurat's drawings are the reason to go.

Odd couples, or maybe not

There are as usual several great pairings or groupings of works interspersed throughout the museum in corridors and passageways. I guess museums work it that way -- making use of every available wall space. My eye was drawn to this pair in the Contemporary corridor:

A nice dreamy Balthus


and a fierce Dubuffet nude.

Dead artists society

Elsewhere, in the corridor between the Museum rentals shop and the coat check I noticed something I consider peculiar: a group of works by 20th Century artists whose commonality (with one exception) seems to be that the artists are all dead. Now of course museum collections are full of work by dead artists and so why this surprises me I don't know. But like I say I couldn't find any other thread that ran through the disparate group of works by Jess (died 2004), Jacob Lawrence (died 2000), William Nelson Copley (died 1996), Joan Brown (died 1990), Bob Thompson (died 1966), Alma Thomas (died 1978), Claude Clark (died 1943) and -- the only one still alive -- Bruce Nauman (born 1941).



lawrence, jacob
Here's the Brown painting, "Woman in Room" 1975. I had just seen a show of Brown works in San Francisco when Anna Conti and I stepped out to look at art. What struck me there -- and it's in this work, too, is Brown's fashion sensibility. Even with a nude, there's fashion. The high heels, the cigarette, the blue face mask. Fun.


This is Lawrence's "Taboo" 1963 which depicts two inter-racial wedding couples. It reminds me of Mexican day of the dead iconography.

Ant-e-room art

Finally, in the small anteroom outside the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, this nice group of three, a mini-show of bug art which is fun and summery -- what bug does not remind you of summer? (and I apologize for my photos. The colors are too red.:
brown, joan

Yukinori Yanagi's "Wandering Position" 1997 shows the trail a wandering ant took as it tried to get off an etching plate. The artist followed the ant's trail with an etching tool and incised the lines into the plate. The edges of the print are dense with lines because the ant repeatedly went there to escape. The image is a detail of the 5-color etching.


Ed Ruscha's "Swarm of Red Ants" 1972 is a color screenprint from his portfolio "Insects"
ruscha, ed

Morris Graves' "The Unregimented One," 1958, is a 5-color etching with a martial formation of ...June bugs? or beetles?
balthus
It's nice and cool in the museum, so go hang out for a while.
graves, morris
yanagi, yukinori

permanent link   roberta 11:02 AM
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Posted by libby

Roberta and I buzzed over to Mei-Ling Hom's studio two days ago to catch her clouds before they travelled to the main lobby of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington D.C. They are travelling by truck in four separate shipments as I write this (right, clouds in the studio, tagged blue for Sackler installation).

The clouds, which are pretty ephemeral-looking bundles of air sheathed in chicken wire, are nearly transparent. They may look ephemeral, but they'll be up at the Sackler for six months--for an art exhibit, that's eternity and "storage" said Hom, happy at the prospect of clearing out some space in her studio.


Here's a post I wrote on the first six clouds Hom made, which are awaiting installation at Philadelphia International Airport (left, clouds installed at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery).

The Sackler is hosting 35 new ones, which will float above (so they don't interfere with people) and get more and more tightly arranged toward the back of the space where Hom said they would achieve critical mass against the back wall.

Hom greeted us in the huge, South Philadelphia studio just a couple of hours after her silkworms--she had made them as an artist in residence at the Fabric Workshop and Museum--took off for a show at Tufts University. She said her husband, David McClelland, had gone on a mission of mercy to fetch us some cookies.

He arrived, pizzelles in hand, while we were still standing near the doorway, and offered us coffee or yao li tea that they had brought back from China. We went for the tea, which tasted earthy and unfamiliar, but thick on the tongue and soothing (right, Roberta, yao li tea and pizzelles in the studio).

Somewhere amidst this conversation about shipping her art, Hom mentioned that there is a new art shipper that has set up shop at the old Philadelphia Navy Yard.

We learned some interesting facts about China and about Hom and McClelland. For instance, they had visited Gaolin Mountain and the porcelain institute there. Gaolin, which is honeycombed with old mines for extracting the clay, is the same word as kaolin, a particularly pure form of clay. Today, said Hom -- or was it McClelland?--the Chinese blast the clay out of the mountain, which has sunk a great deal from the old mines. They were surprised by the mix of ancient water-powered methods and modern factory ones in bringing the clay to market.

The two visited China on an invitation from Eastlink Gallery in Shanghai to create work for a show aimed at pairing 22 international artists with 22 Chinese artists. "Most of the foreign artists didn't find a match," said Hom, although she herself found a partner. Well, even though the pairing concept didn't always work out, there was a show, which ended up running concurrently with the Shanghai Biennial in the fall of 2004 (left, Hom, clouds and chair in studio).

"Shanghai is the new Prague," Hom said, later in the conversation, referring to the free-floating ex-pat scene there where the gallery workers included an Indonesian woman from Holland, and woman from Honkong and a woman from Norway with a Chinese husband, both of whom ran a fish-packing company. Thus began the morning's first conversation about gender roles, the women being "the hind legs of the elephant," doing the tasks that make gallery and the male gallery owners look good.

At the Sackler, Hom said her clouds, Chinese symbols of good fortune, would be accompanied by music by Eli Marshall. Hom met Marshall when his grandmother, who was taking a ceramics class under Hom at Community College, said, You should collaborate with my grandson. The rest is history.

Marshall ended up doing the compositions both for Hom's cloud installation at Fleisher-Ollman and for the Sackler.

Marshall had studied composition at Curtis with Ned Rorem, his great uncle, then studied in China on a Fullbright, staying on in Beijing, excited by all the dramatic changes going on there. "He's an American seeing China and I'm Chinese American...on opposite shores," Hom said, excited by the fortune of the coincidences.

To create the music while divided by half the world, Hom and Marshall communicated through email. Hom sent images and described the mood of the space and the shape of it. The recording for the Sackler was done in Shanghai with a well-known Shanghai Chinese-flute player (who coincidentally is expected to perform in October at the Kennedy Center with the Shanghai Symphony). The idea is for the sound to set the emotional tone, as in music made for film--what you'd like your audience to experience.

The conversation about Marshall and his grandmother brought the conversation around to the importance of creating connections and having a network in Chinese culture. Marshall is now part of Hom's network.

In response to a question, Hom talked about the problem of representing the instability of a cloud. She showed us an early effort, a peanut-shaped cloud of laminated layers of wood, which she made with a hatchet. Delicate hatchet scores are visible on the surface of piece (right, Glu-Lam cloud with tissue rising from the box behind it).

"The hatchet was my birthday present to Mei-Ling," said McClelland, who, being a guy who knows how tools should be used, didn't really approve of her chopping technique. She ignored his advice.

Hom said she began carving on 9/11 with a dark piece of walnut.

To create the chicken wire clouds, Hom uses needle-nose pliers, and sometimes puts electrical tape on her fingertips to protect them. McClelland called her rhythmic work with the pliers "bug work." A conversation about bees and drones and lace-making and men's work versus women's work ensued. The gender conversation seemed like a way for the two to separate themselves, since they seem symbiotic, two sweet peas nestled in their studio pod.

The sheets of chicken wire Hom thinks about as (fabric) pattern pieces with darts when she's imagining about how to make each shape. She does not use sketches, and she works to music (a pretty eclectic mix from classical to world music) and had the help of a studio assistant, Jaein Pyo, one of her Community College students (left, some clouds scudding across the studio floor).



Roberta asked about the piece for Chinatown that Hom is working on with the Asian Arts Initiative--one of seven major site-specific installations for Chinatown by Asian-American artists, funded by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. It is called "China Eyes," and Hom's plan is for a mural of eyes from the community to watch and be seen on either side of the Vine Street Expressway. Artist Richard Ryan is photographing the eyes for Hom. But the final decisions on the project have not yet been made.

Hom has another cloud project, a walkway for Fleisher Art Memorial also in the works, but we didn't ask about it, having posted on it quite recently here.

McClelland said before we left, "If you fly to Washington to see the show, you can see the [first six clouds from the Fleisher-Ollman show] at the airport."

But not yet. First check at the airport's exhibitions page to see if they're up yet.hom, mei-lingmcclelland, davidryan, richard

permanent link   libby 10:49 AM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly includes my piece on "Contemporary Masks," the Art in City Hall exhibit. Here's the link and below is the article with some added pictures.

About Face

"Contemporary Masks," the new Art in City Hall exhibition, shows 21 local artists-a remarkably large number-who produce wearable headgear. Whether the masks were created for use in performance or ritual, or for wall display, the objects communicate the power of a veil to transform the familiar into something alien and forbidding.

Many of the masks resemble fierce totemic objects, and a few evoke life or death masks. And while none could be considered classically beautiful, the objects all convey an authority that comes from representing faces and heads -- body parts that are deemed the home of individuality and spirit.

Unlike most of what's on display, Robert Smythe's The Horse (pictured above) is made of metal, cloth and hair. And Stephen C. Layne's Fox and Girl -- both made partly with animal fur (unclear whether it's fake or real) -- stand out for their descriptive instead of incantatory mien.

Less evocative of tribal rituals than of theater and costume, The Horse is shaped like a horse head. The Fox has a fox head (taxidermied or fake, it's hard to tell) attached to a simple human facemask and evokes a child's Halloween costume.

This doesn't make Smythe's or Layne's masks lesser objects, but it does separate them from more iconic pieces like those of Clifford Ward or Chantaphone Rajavong, both of whose works stretch the imagination and take it on a time-and-culture-twisting trip.


ward, clifford
Rajavong's Astro Mask (right above) suggests a Don Quixote-like whimsical warrior or a tribal chieftain holding court. The mask's materials and affect perfectly mix East with West, past with present. The simple metal mask is adorned with common materials (Mardi Gras beads, watch parts, hair, circuitry, thread, sunglasses lenses), and is put together with extraordinary flair and materials savvy. It's an outstanding piece of assemblage art. Rajavong's Fusion Mask, (left above) built with plastic spoons, cocktail forks, beads and buttons, (above) is likewise fresh and subversive.

Clifford Ward's Masked Tattoo and Boy King Mask (above left) also mix East and West, this time African masks and Mardi Gras. Both are haunting and elegant.



Robert Aiosa's Untitled bird head made of latex, paint and hair is another standout. (image right) The large head, with its glass eyes and no apparent openings for a mouth, is topped with a wild mane of hair that looks like Elvis with bed head. The bird's beak-exceptionally long and ending in a curved knob-resembles the extinct dodo or some other primordial bird. The mask is so lifelike it could be from a natural science museum.


But it's art. The piece has been worn-as I saw in a documentary photograph in the student show "Philadelphia Sculptors Annual Student Exhibition 5 Into 1" at Moore College last spring. Aiosa's photo, (left) a small version of which appears here with the bird mask, shows a young couple holding hands. Here's my post which mentions the photo.
rajavong, chantaphone
The girlfriend is wearing the bird mask, and the odd couple is compelling. Who hasn't felt like an odd bird in a social situation? The photo is wonderful and wise, as is seeing the mask in the show.

Wearable masks like these are exaggerations of the figurative masks people wear. Many of these masks suggest power and threat, and
hierarchies with chiefs and followers. Sitting as they do in City Hall, the masks are a reminder of the city's power players and their often fierce posturings.

"Contemporary Masks" Artist’s reception: Wed., Aug. 17, 5-7pm. Free. Through Oct. 14. City Hall, Broad and Market sts., second and fourth fls., northeast corner. 215.683.2078.

sketches
smythe, robert

I'm spending way too much time at Flickr the free photo file-sharing site. Kind of like Friendster for shutterbugs, Flickr provides 20 megs of free storage per month and displays digital images at three sizes-thumbnail, medium and high-res. The user interface is as friendly as they come. The site's a photo democracy akin to the traveling "Snapshot" exhibit at Arcadia University a few years back. There are a lot of kitty and girlfriend pictures, and mostly I don't suggest spending time browsing-just upload and organize your own stuff for display. If you don't have a website yet, start here and do it fast. Flickr is beta testing now and will charge a fee at some point.

>> Speaking of photos, here's a real-world pairing to try: Gallery 339's emerging artists exhibit, which includes Sarah Stolfa's color portraits from her McGlinchy's bar series, and Photo West Gallery's show of photo portraits by Corey Armpriester, with each sitter photographed while crying. Gallery 339's show is up through Aug. 28, and Armpriester's show runs Sept. 2 through 17, with a reception the evening of Fri., Sept. 9.
aiosa, robert

permanent link   roberta 10:54 PM
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Posted by roberta

Hi there, I'm back and happy to see that artblog was such a hellzapoppin place in my absence. Thanks to everybody who contributed to the discussion about LINC and to everybody who contributed a post.

Meanwhile, I'm organizing my thoughts about my trip west into several posts and will try to keep them semi-short and at least semi-coherent. Mostly you can find commentary everywhere about California and I won't try to add to the din. But I have a bunch of pictures to share and a few thought bubbles.

This post will deal with our time in Los Angeles, where Steve, Stella and I saw the Getty Center, had a couple of ad hoc art sitings in Santa Monica/Venice Beach, and saw the La Brea tar pits. (Note: many of my photos can be seen in medium and high resolution on my flickr site.) (this image is Jonathan Borofsky's "Clown Ballerina" which we stumbled upon while walking back to our hotel in Santa Monica one afternoon. Stella: "That's pretty scary." Me: "Yes, isn't it great.")



I love this mural by someone named R. Cronk on the side of a Venice Beach building. The keep on truckin ambiance coupled with the druggy I'm seeing double affect is perfect for the beach crowd we'd just left behind.


Speaking of the beach this is a shot of the Santa Monica beach which seems to go on for scores of miles. I've never seen so much white sand.



Here is the Claes Oldenburg binoculars sculpture on Main St. in either Santa Monica or Venice Beach. artblog contributor James Rosenthal mentioned them in his post a while back when he took a trip to LA. The sculpture sits outside an advertising agency about a block away from the building with the Borofsky Clown Ballerina. The latter building by the way is empty and totally forlorn giving the Clown Ballerina even more creep show edge.



Before we get to the Getty here's a couple of sky images from the airplane. I can't seem to get enough of the clouds and atmosphere seen from up high so I guess you'll have to bear with me...or cry uncle and let me know "no more clouds!"

(image at top of post is another airplane shot, taken by Stella. It's above Los Angeles before we were landing.)



That's Stella's hand in silhouette and her mirror reflecting the sky in this image. I swear I wasn't aiming fror the sky mirror sky triad. It just happened.

Getty frames the blue


Richard Meier's buildings, Robert Irwin's gardens and the changing special exhibitions are the reason to go. Meier's design blends inside and outside to create great outdoor rooms and inside spaces that are not bad as well. But it's the outdoors that made the trip. Everywhere, grand promenades and lookouts give the feel of strolling the deck of a yacht or maybe walking around a palace. America's Versailles, perhaps? The space is gracious and yet human in scale. And being up there at what seems like the top of the mountain makes you feel elevated in spirit. (image is a shot of the lobby of the main building)



The special exhibits up now are Rembrandt's late portraits of his friends depicted as saints. I wasn't allowed to take photographs but I'll just say that the way the exhibit was laid out was excellent. Ample space for each work and the exhibit set in several large, high-ceilinged rooms. A dramatic entryway was wallpapered in black with blown-up images of the Rembrandt works. You could see each brush stroke and crack and that was pretty remarkable. The curatorial gist of the show is that Rembrandt changed his painting style at the end and was a brushy expressionist in comparison with work he did as a younger man. (image is looking down on the cafeteria, a great pillared space that was unexpected for being a room outdoors.)

The other special exhibit right now is photographs by Paul Strand known to me at any rate as a New York photographer depicting the city's architecture and people. It's a big show and I learned that Strand worked for the WPA and that he became an expatriot during the McCarthy era in the 1950s and took his camera with him to Europe where he went back to nature and to small town life looking for authenticity. Many shots of humble working folk -- fishermen, farmers, etc. Beautiful black and white photos.

In the Getty Garden

We took the garden tour at 12:30 and the white travertine stone of the buildings is positively blinding in the midday sun. In fact the Getty provides sun umbrellas for use when strolling between buildings. We used them.

Our Belgian-born docent guide, Betty Hyatt ("je parle francais, ik spreck nederlands" was her museum badge's subtitle.) gave a sparky tour peppered with gossipy commentary about Meier and Irwin and how they disliked each other.

Hyatt also gives the architecture tours, so she started out with some background on the building, which was great, because apart from absorbing the brilliance of the stone and the elegance of the spaces I didn't know much.

So, for example, apparently Meier's design is based on the square. To be precise, the 30" by 30" square which is the amount of breathing space a human being needs to stand comfortably anywhere. So says pop psychology at any rate. The walls of the buildings are all segmented into patterns that are grids of 30" by 30" squares and the grid motif repeats everywhere. (Here's the grid under a three-legged table in one of the outdoor rooms. Steve is fascinated with 3-legged tables (apparently they're more stable than four-legged tables). So here's a shot I call three legs, four feet.)



Laurie Olin was the landscape architect for the project. That's Philadelphia's Laurie Olin. Hit the Olin link here and it tells you of their participation in the Getty.

The trees, and there are lots, were grown in containers and planted in the very same containers on site. The containers hold 8 ft. of dirt. They're enormous. The guide said "It's almost like bansai. Not every tree does well but most seem to be taking it very well."

The gardeners take no prisoners. If a tree, shrub or flower doesn't look good, out it goes. Most of the flowers planted around the buildings are white. There are white crepe myrtls, white jasmine, white hibiscus, white wisteria. The white and the dictum for visual perfection come from Meier. There's one flower that's not white -- the bird of paradise. But that's ok because the flower is the official Los Angeles city flower and Meier wanted to acknowledge the city in his plan. (Indeed the city feels so far away it's like another country so Meier is right to assert its presence with the flower.)

The buildings have now been open 8 years and apparently the design has been tweaked here and there. Here's one example she gave. A small river-like water element, once at foot level, has now been moved up onto a waist-high wall. "It's better now than the original," said Hyatt, explainint that people used to step in the water when it was lying there right at foot level. "So Meier's not as perfect as he thinks he is," she added.



According to Hyatt, Meier was upset when he didn't get the Getty garden commission and Robert Irwin got it instead. And you can see the prickliness of the relationship between them in a video, "Concert of Wills" in which the two sit at a round table and "discuss" the project. They didn't like each other but they had to work together, said Hyatt.



Irwin, a San Diego artist originally didn't want there to be a guided tour of his garden because he said then people would think his work was a garden. Irwin says it's not a garden. It's a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to a work of art. That's silly, though. It's a garden.

Irwin didn't know a thing about gardening, nor did he care. He had color and texture and sound ideas and he drove the gardener crazy according to Hyatt. Like with all gardens, some things work and some don't. The bougainvillea which Irwin envisioned as fountain-like sprays tumbling over the top of four giant hourglass structure weren't doing too well until recently. The support structures, made of rebar which seemed welded together didn't allow enough air to circulate for the plants to thrive. (the above two pictures show the flowers and the rebar structure)

They drilled holes into the rebar supports and now the flowers are doing better. But because of the strong ocean winds the delicate flowers will never trail over the sides as Irwin hoped. (They'd be blown away or look mighty straggly if left to do so). So they'll be trimmed to stay on top of the structures. And the whole thing, instead of looking like fountains, now suggests torches according to Hyatt.

That's it for Getty, except to say that the tram we took to get from the parking lot to the Center is a class act. And that traffic on HY 101 when we left the building at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon was the pits -- it was parking lot no matter which way you were going.

Tar baby

After the Getty there was only one "right" place for us. And that was the La Brea tar pits. So we drove up Wilshire Blvd, through Beverly Hills, past Rodeo Drive and into the neighborhood that houses the phenom where we parked and then asked, because it wasn't specified in the guide book, where in the heck were they? The parking lot attendant shrugged and muttered something about they were everwhere which left us all the more confused. But indeed he was right. The park behind LA County Museum of Art, which is where the tar is, sits on a big smelly deposit that bubbles up here and there and so the tar pools are literally everywhere. And just in case you wondered, it smells like roofing material or asphalt.


Mostly the pits have been excavated andare closed but there is one working pit and even though it was after 4 pm, the official pit closing time, a volunteer worker kindly let us in to the public observation room when she found out we were from out of town. There we got to see two young workers sitting on scaffolding over the tar, one of them leaning over as if scooping something out of the goo. The pit is sealed off from the rest of the world by a plexiglas enclosure, so nobody but authorized personnel are let inside. There's a chalk board on one wall detailing the date and name of all the bones found. I didn't copy down any details but clearly it's a serious archeological site.

irwin, robert
End of LA Story. Next I want to tell you about my San Francisco day including a studio visit with Anna Conti, artist and blogger extraordinaire. We had fun. Talked deep thoughts and a lot of hooey about art and life in San Francisco and it was a thrill to meet in the real world someone whose voice you only know in its cyber incarnation. More on that very soon.
meier, richard

permanent link   roberta 9:24 PM
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Posted by libby

First Friday was busier--and way more interesting than I expected, given it was August, the streets were hot, and a number of galleries were dark for the month. For starters, there were two new galleries, a mix of art I'd never seen the likes of before, and lots of art for sale on the sidewalks. I talked to so many people and looked at so much work, I missed a couple of galleries on my Old City list and never made it further west.

God was on the mind of the design group GH avisualagency, at 222 Gallery, which created a faux public relations campaign for God. Not nearly as transcendant as Mark Brodzik's bold GODCO billboard campaign, it still managed to get a few laughs out of me for its social observations, especially the cheesy church movable-letter marqee with the quote from Job and a few of the logos for God, each tailored to a different social set. I am especially fond of the Goth three-spikes logo.

The exhibit included Dewar's Profile-style interviews with people and their relationship to religion and God (not so funny) and some swell twisted slogans in several "strategic partnership" announcements included one with Disney World for a new area called "The Heavenly Kingdom," and another partnership with McDonald's--"I'm lovin' Him." My God would have taken this farther.




Our neighbors

At PII Gallery, 242 Race St., which specializes in international art, Venezuela-born Salvador Di Quinzio, who has been traveling with his wife to places like Hungary, Surinam and Holland, said he finds himself in love with Philadelphia--a very different place from his last visit here several years ago. His show, "Hot Summer in the City," is an expression of that love, showing off some swell Latin surrealist images of neighborly city life (image, "Neighbors).


His wife Marion, who was born in America, said the two had been traveling on business for Alcoa. Alcoa? Does this company still exist? I guess they're just not doing the kind of consumer advertising they used to. Marion was showing her own paintings in the back room of PII...energetic abstracts, including one inspired by the Liberty Bell. This painting was inspired by Surinam (left, "Tropical Kaleidoscope").



Across from Salvador's paintings in the front room were a series of scroll paintings by Cathleen Hughes, an outlier in this show otherwise dedicated to Philadelphia, and in the back, some Philadelphia people-and-place photos by Laura Jean Zito, whose very personal pictures of Bedouin nomads at Photo West caught some attention in the spring (left, Zito's "Mayor Street Focus").


New gallery in the nick of time

Just down the street at 212 Race, I came upon a gallery that literally had just opened its doors. The 212 Gallery is a temporary use of an otherwise vacant space. Michael Veneziale said the 212 Gallery is his--a temporary use of vacant first-floor space in his friend Tom Goldman's building (here's Veneziali out front, taking a break).





Veneziale, who just drove up from Kentucky on Friday and who hails from Doylestown, threw up some of his own photo-based, jazzy large paintings of New York City. He's got a background in set design and webby stuff, and that design experience comes through in the work, which is easy to approach. I especially liked his use of a pencil on the bare walls to label and comment ("Boogie Down Bronx").




He also put up his friend Chris Blasucci's minimalist and conceptual paintings. Blasucci is also from Doylestown and that's the sum of what I know about him. His "Unpowered Pennsylvania" has the handwritten title words hiding under the bushel of more assertive letters (left, "Unpowered Pennsylvania).





Newish gallery


I also stopped in an unfamiliar place--Sol Gallery. Owner Larry Solitrin was presiding over a "Naked: photographs by Whitney Thomas" up for the second month in a row, the gallery's inaugural exhibit. Solitrin's son (I failed to write down his last name) was passing around the refreshments, and the whole place had a nice friendly atmosphere. The work has the fashion-shoot slickness and shouts its Robert Mapplethorpe roots a little loudly. The bodies are dark and light, male and female and without warts (left, one of Thomas' photos).


Good group

Artjaz Gallery was popping with a group show of new artists. Here's a shot of Cynthelia Cephas with one of a number of beautifully made quilts with musical and African-American themes(left, Cephas and "The Gathering").





I liked a fair amount of the work in this show, including this mixed-media piece (I think my notes say it's mixed media and patina) by Michael Ziegler that reminded me of dragon scales. The scales were collaged like shingles (left, "Salt Pond")>






In a more traditional vein were paintings, some of which looked photo-based, from Charley Palmer. In this one, the family is pressed together and elongated to create an elegant composition of family strength (left, "Mother's Hat").

Others in the show included Oleg Kufayev, Onyeka Ibe, Katherine Kisa, and Dianne Smith.



T-shirt stories


Walking up Second Street, I saw a bunch of interesting and enterprising artists hawking their wares. First I found Joshua Rickenbaugh, with a pile of his book "Horror Series" in front of him filled with quirky cartoon abstractions in black and white and highlighter yellow. Rickenbaugh, a Kutztown graduate, had self-published the collection. Even better, he was wearing a t-shirt to which he had taped with great swatches of cellophane tape a computer-printed-out logo from a band he liked (I can't believe I didn't write down the name of the band, which meant nothing to me), also in black and highlighter yellow. He said it was a lot cheaper to decorate his shirts that way than to buy them pre-printed. Gotta love him (left, Rickenbaugh, his taped-on logo cleverly covered with an copy of his book "Horror Series").


A little further down the street, some great t-shirts and cartoon drawings (in micron pen) from John Hopkins caught my eye. Hopkins, who works at Christ Church, said he drew inspiration from Ben Franklin's grave, where he gave tours (left, Hopkins with his t-shirts).



A giveaway artist gives me art

While I chatted with Hopkins, two young women at the next table twinkled at the mention of artblog. One was selling jewelry, but I didn't get her name or her photo. Sorry. The other, Amy Ignatow, presented me with a little self-published comic book she was giving away to publicize her work. We bonded over giveaways, but I also loved her website and want to promote her female comic sensibility. Somehow funnies still remain a mostly men's club. But there are plenty of funny women, too, and Ignatow is one of them (left, Ignatow and "The Good Book?").



Sink--or swim--a new art magazine makes noise

At this point, I bumped into Brook Midgley from "Sink Magazine," self-dubbed "the official magazine of first friday." They haven't started publishing yet. Yo, I said. We should talk. (I thought we were the official magazine of first friday). Midgley agreed and sent me over to talk to Cullen Factor, Sink's publicist, and Tom Murphy, Sink's publisher/creative director.

The two were along side the "Real World" building (left), soon to house a new gallery called F.U.E.L. Sink and F.U.E.L. (god, i hate typing all those periods) are planning to launch together at the October First Friday.

After listening to Factor, say things like, "The art revolution in Philadelphia has begun" (we at artblog and our readers already knew this), and "What Andy Warhol and The Factory were to New York City's art movement, Sink Magazine will be to Philadelphia's art scene," I finally figured out what he is hoping to do--create a sort of People Magazine for the arts in Philadelphia, with a focus on young artists, especially art students. The hope is to create a culture and buzz and commerce that will keep young artists in town when they graduate. Well, we here at artblog also think young artists are a lot better to look at than old artists, so if it's a face magazine, that's the way to go.

Factor, a native New Yorker who has switched allegiance to Philadelphia as so many of us have, has an aggressive delivery style that reminds me of Penn Jillette, the talker in Penn & Teller who just produced the movie "The Aristocrats."

If Sink succeeds in grabbing that youthful audience, which is large in number, they should do better than, say, Seven Arts, that went down the tubes for lack of a broad enough readership. By the way, I asked about Sink's funding source and got a terse "No comment" from Factor.

F.U.E.L., according to proprietors Jen Yaron and Marguerite McDonald, plans to show undergraduate art work, and will be "reaching out" to the schools and art department chairs. Unless the two succeed in weeding out the immature work that usually comes out of art school, I do believe they will have a tougher row to hoe than "Sink." Immature art and immature audience means not enough sales, but these two are businesswomen rather than curators, so perhaps I'm wrong.

I met all these people at the gallery and the magazine's first publicity stunt (see image above), for which they announced a "live" painting show, featuring artists Perry Milou and Thomas Dellapenna. I only saw Milou, looking cute, which is what he does best (check out his website to see what I mean). I take this as a taste of things to come (if you look really closely at that picture above, perhaps you can see Milou sitting on the window ledge on 3rd Street).

Wax, chapter and verse

My last stop was at Siano, which is hosting "Oil + Wax, chapter & verse," wholly organized by artist Alan Soffer, who is an energizer bunny kind of guy. The show runs until Aug. 20. It began at Wallingford in conjunction with the Wax conference there, also organized by Soffer, and is also going to travel to Maine and California. Then part of the show will appear in Scottsdale, AZ. Here's a shot of Soffer with one of his paintings. Although many of the artists were local in this show, it drew work from across the country.

As you might imagine, the show was largely more traditional than my usual tastes, but there were a number of things to look at and enjoy, including two small abstractions with jewel-like colors (and no label at all) by Moe Brooker. Artists include Elise Freda, Frank Hyder, Michelle Marcuse, Valentina Dubasky, Nancy Markezin, Philip Zuchman, Sande Miot, Jeff Schaller, Jacqueline Cornette, Leslie Giuliani, Howard Hersh, Kim Bernard, Libbie Soffer (Alan's wife), Dale Roberts, and Dan Addington.
gh a visual agencybrodzik, markdi quinzio, salvadordi quinzio, marionhughes, cathleenzito, laura jeanveneziale, michaelblasucci, christhomas, whitneycephas, cyntheliaziegler, michaelpalmer, charleykufayev, olegibe, onyekakisa, katherinesmith, diannerickenbaugh, joshuahopkins, johnignatow, amysink magazinemilou, perrysoffer, alanbrooker, moe

permanent link   libby 6:40 AM
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Posted by libby

I meant to put up a little item about the crafts corridor which is right next to the photography corridor at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

There's a bunch of juicy, contemporary stuff on display from the collection, including this little grouping--front to back, Robert Arneson's portrait of David Gilhooly, Gilhooly's "Osiris Vegefrogged," and Viola Frey's "The Red Hand."


In contrast, several muted Japanese pieces show a very different approach, including this Japanese vase by Koyama Fujio.





Proving that excess can be in a monotone, again a contrast to Koyama, the show included this fabulous "Double Face Jug and Candle Holder" by Cleater (CJ) and Billie Meaders.

And in a take on remarkable control and wit, there are several teapots, including Annette Corcoran's "Red-Shouldered Hawk Teapot," better than nature. Alas, my picture-taking skills are not better than nature, so I'll skip this photo.

Local artists Jill Bonovitz and Robert Winokur are also represented in clay.

In wood, another great conversation goes on between Wharton Esherick's hickory "Steps with Elephant and Donkey Finials" (1935) right next to Robert Whitley's birds eye maple "Continuum Chair" (1978) (right, "Continuum Chair").

I felt lucky that I even looked up to see this work. It's on the way in and out of the "Mavericks of Color" show (see post). I nearly missed it thanks to my single-minded, driven ways.
gilhooly, david
arneson, robert
frey, viola
koyama, fujio
meaders, chester and billie
whitley, robert
esherick, wharton

permanent link   libby 5:21 PM
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Posted by libby

Here's a picture of Brian Wallace flying his true colors Thursday night at Moore College. I had to share his great look.

Wallace, who's the director of exhibitions there, was presiding over a closing reception for the two summer artists-in-residence in the galleries, one of those weekday events when it's not clear that anyone is going to show up (some did).

The two artists--Jennifer Blazina and Elena Fajt--had spent the summer using the Levy and Paley Galleries at Moore as a hybrid studio/exhibition space. Fajt, in her show "More Hair?," collected hair clippings that people donated and figured out a wide variety of ways to use them. Blazina, in her show "Re-Collect," cast molds that incorporated old pictures.

Hair, once it's cut off a head, loses its bounce. It suggests loss and death and scalpings. And Fajt, who is Slovenian, recognizes that the material is, well, rather off-putting. In fact, some of the work directly confronts its transgressive nature, such as the piece that urges you to touch and move the hair pillar from one pedestal to the other. She even had a survey to collect people's reactions to the use of hair (image, "/Do Not/ Touch").

I recently had a conversation with a friend who lives in Hilo, and he was talking about the number of people who completely remove all their body hair, and all I could think of was how sad that people had become so visually cued, thanks to television and the movies, that they had forgotten about the pleasures of touch.

The bear-rug shapes suggested our affinity with animals and hair as fur. They also had a nice mappy quality up there on the wall. (To have put them on the floor would have been transgressive, indeed.)

Fajt had a number of surprising moves in her use of hair, including freezing it in large blocks of ice that we got to watch melt. Here's a piece like a capped ice-block bollard, out on the sidewalk. The indoor ice cube, with paper towels beneath to absorb the drips, was more demure and was named "Passing of Time/Ice."

For all the creativity, I came away looking for more content.

Blazina, who teaches at Drexel, had shown some work about a year ago at Spector Gallery. Since then, she has worked her way out of a crowd of tiny, portraits of the dead in tiny cast plaster frames that lacked the poetry needed to counteract the sense of lives dried, wasted and lost.

Blazina is still using the same labor-intensive process of combining screen prints she makes of old photographic portraits with casts of old picture frames. The work takes on greater interest with transparent media, the pictures embedded through thick layers of glass or rubber (image, "Class of 1940, cast glass, screen print, steel).



Her series filled the wall spaces with multiples. I especially liked the yearbook portraits under glass and the little room filled from floor to ceiling with splayed-open lockets. There was a sad claustrophobia in the tiny space with the yellowy-brown, rubber lockets. But the material was also funny. And the open lockets, unable to close and hold a secret love, reminded me of Mickey Mouse ears (image, "Memento Mori," cast rubber, screen print, silk cord).

By the way, look closely at that picture at the top of Wallace and you will see he's got one of the lockets around his neck.

Outside, there's a flag from Angie Evans that will fly until Aug. 12, then to be replaced by another artist's contribution (Wallace isn't telling whose, yet). The flags are part of a series called "Temporary Allegiance," curated by Philip von Zweck. A small number of artists responded to the open call for submissions at this time when flag waving seems to be disturbing the peace. Each flag will hang for one week at a time and afterward, all the flags will be shown as a group. This one, named "What's that Flag?" is a big question mark.
fajt, elena
blazina, jennifer
evans, angie
von zweck, philip
wallace, brian

permanent link   libby 5:10 PM
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