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Posted by libby

The three members showing at Vox Populi have some weird decorative vibe going. All three--Max Lawrence, Amy Adams and Anne Schaefer make me think of ways we pump up the looks of the spaces around us. Yet the three bodies of work are distinct and completely different.

Lawrence, who goes wild and funky and basically out-of-control when he installs a big space, and has total control when he paints or creates an image in a smaller frame, swathed swags of colored rope lights all over his assigned gallery space for his installation "Scorch Doppler, unearthing the demise of a teenage phoneme...." It's curtains meet Christmas. The ropes, which coil in piles on the floor as well as drape around the space, also remind me of Mardi Gras lagniappe.

In a quadrant of the room in front of the rope lights hang puddles of epoxy with images like eyes and atomic explosions. I'm not sure of how they tie in, but they catch the rope-light extravaganza and they sway in the breeze--motion is always a plus.



But to me the guts of the installation are in the small screen and the interactive keyboard-controlled projection on the wall. On the small screen are trippy images of mushroom-inhabited landscapes and swivelling silhouetted body builders and perfect girls raising issues about what we do to ourselves and how the culture delivers messages about how we ought to fit some commercialized image of a human being.

What he's done with this serious subject turns out to be pretty funny and entertaining. I especially like the body builder's moves.

Plus it's beautiful to look at, with the computer-program crispness of Jennifer Steinkamp's Dancing Girls (see posts here and here) or of Anne Skoogfors' "Botanica" (see posts here and here), plus the intense color of a Peter Max painting, without the kitsch.




Some of these images, which he has drawn, not borrowed, are mixed with musical loops and words in the keyboard-controlled interactive part, which also brings up the issues of our relationship to our body. The words, which I could barely understand, include "did he", "did she," "where did", "drinks, "eats," smokes," "coconuts," "balls," "beers," etc. Some of the images are sound files converted into visual files on the computer. With all these tools, you can make your own mini music video, sort of.

Whatever you press on the piano starts creating a loop that interacts with whetever else you press.

In a conversation with Lawrence, he mentioned his own body image, from being an 220-pound teenager to becoming 140-pound young man. He's been pretty much the same size and shape--normal--since I've known him, and it seems that it's the messages of the culture that remain, that are disturbing him. Lawrence said, "People treat you differently when your fat and when you're skinny... Will people like me better if I'm skinnier?"

I have trouble making the link between the themes of the smaller pieces and the nuclear explosion of the larger installation. But there's a trippy consistency of bright color-and-light overload that swirls into some centripetal galaxy of a living room.

Amy Adams, whose work last year was all about nothing, the void, the cybervoid, and the void of consumer glut has taken some of the same imagery and recast it into something wholly decorative. The void work was also decorative, but in a rather unusual way. In that work, the flat, textureless balls and their sometimes silver interstices gave back such a nothing as to be amazingly something ("Untitled," 24 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel).

This new work, in her exhibit "skylark," has brush strokes. They're David Reed-style brushstrokes, statements about paint and the act of painting. But unlike David Reed's brushstrokes, these are decorative baubles in Anne Craven pinks or swimming-pool blues amid the field of the nothing-balls from the previous work, decorative chandeliers of drips, and spaghetti-like tangles ("Untitled," 30 x 12 inches, acrylic on panel).

Some of these brushstrokes are baroque--complex squiggles of pendants amid the spheres. Some of the spheres take on a gothic sort of darkness. There's also a new depth of field in these paintings, a forward and back, an undulation in some of them, an endless cave quality in others. They continue to surprise me, finding a new sort of nothingness to paint about--the paint itself. But the spaghetti and the spheres, with their no-texture, suggest not just a cyberworld but a tangle of wires and neurons, and only the brush stroke is human ("Untitled," 48 x 42 inches, acrylic on panel).


Anne Schaefer, who last showed work of and about fabric, has moved on to wallpaper (at least that's what it reminds me of) in her exhibit "Sum."

Schaefer layers paint and collage and I'm not sure what to create textures that remind me of historic textured wall coverings for dados and such. But they're fragments, as are the intense bits of color that pop from the dark-colored backdrops.


In a way, I feel like I'm in a Better Homes and Gardens, in which retro color and motifs have painted the landscape. I liked looking, but I'm not sure why, yet, other than I've never seen this work before. I need more time to figure out why it makes me want to see it (I can't tell you the titles to these because my systems failed me).



In the 4th room, there's work by guest artist Jason Hughes. There was a video of someone walking in and out of deserted industrial-looking hallways. I lost track of time and space in the video, not knowing if I'd seen the scene in front of me before or not, but I do think that's part of the point, and it made sense with his piece which was an amazing cut-out maze with little graph-paper-like lines (detail below left).

It also related nicely to a film-strip-like series of face photographs, but my favorite piece here was a drawing so strange that I want to see it again (above right).lawrence, maxadams, amyschaefer, annehughes, jason

permanent link   libby 4:34 PM
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Posted by libby

We're going to New York tomorrow to catch a glimpse of a recreation of a Robert Smithson piece en plein air. We'll report when we get back.

permanent link   libby 8:12 PM
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Posted by libby

Anne Minich's one-woman show at the Cathedral is perfectly sited among the stained glass windows in the towering space (right, "Judas Head").

"From the Head Series" presents anonymous, iconic heads against gridded or unpatterned backdrops, each painting/construction suggesting some form of suffering and each head crowned with a halo. The layered ochres and reds of so many of the paintings, the rich finishes, and the beautiful craftsmanship and attention to materials are as much a subject as the imagery.

Their magic is how they interlace the vocabulary of Minimalist corporate uniformity with a vocabulary of objects and icons and somehow reach the intensity of Medieval saints' narratives.

Minich, whose name you may not know although she has been around for a long while, mostly shows in Maine -- see Roberta's post here--and was the 1994 Leeway Bessy Berman Grant winner for excellence in painting. Roberta's post is the beginning of the tale of how this show came to be, but I'm short on the info, which will have to appear in another post on another day.

The gridded backdrops suggest mass-production anonymity of worker bees. The heads reinforce that anonymity--and universality--each head just a flat blank shape. It hardly matters who this suffering saint is. It's not even clear whether the head is male or female. It's just another over-worked, over-stressed disposable person in the production line of life and love.





Not all the backdrops have grids. One has bricks. One has a fleur-de-lis grille pattern that looks Arabian (right). Another has interlocking crosses that remind me of brocaded clerical vestments (left above). All suggest life in compressed space--or a pressured mind. And some suggest domesticity, the pattern of wallpaper--and not. The patterns are mostly so austere, they undermine any notion of decoration. The painting, on the other hand, is not in the least austere, but layered and glorious.





The suffering in these paintings is alleviated not only by the beauty, but by the wifty objects--shells, rocks, shards of clay, thorny objects, a small gold heart locket, a tiny gold cross. The objects become religious relics that are part of the drama in the paintings. This is the rock that pierced my skull forever. This is the shell of a heart. These are my crowns of thorns, my crowns of pain, my crowns of paint. Some people wear their shell of a heart on their sleeve. One head here wears the shells as a crown of glory (left, "Sad," with a tiny gold cross on the left, a gold heart in the upper right corner, and a carved out stencil of a heart in the center, like a brooch).

These may be Bleeding Heart paintings, but this is not true religion--one more reason it's so great to see it hanging in a church. The dramatization of the suffering is borderline ironic. But it's a tiny twinkle of humor.

The exaggerated halos, out of their time and place, suggest both a relishing of pain and a triumph over it in the repetitive drama--as in how many paintings does it take to cure a broken heart. Minich lets it cut both ways, and ultimately, the beauty and discipline of the work wins the conflict, letting the paintings rise to some religious ecstasy of their own.

That tiny space of emotional distance and humor--and it is tiny because at the same time the paintings are so sincere--places the work as post-modern, even with the medieval references.

Each painting, on wood, is framed in its own perfect setting. The head of "Our Lady of Francisville" (left) is screwed with three ordinary round-head screws onto a brick wall backdrop. The screws are a statement. The head rests on a narrow shelf, its molding bottom suggesting a fireplace mantle. "Our Lady of Three Houses" (right above) has a paper-like frame with what look like taped- together joints. These are careful and surprising decisions that bring me back to Duchamp and Magritte.





Looking at this show and reading about that smarty-pants Earl Bronsteen (see post,) I of course come down on the side of Minich, who has nurtured her art and thought processes over so much time, stepping out onto her own limb of artistic logic. This brings to mind something supposedly said by Richard Serra (well, Chuck Close said it was Serra) about an artist needing to take a series of roads that go in a different direction from where the crowd is going, until the crowd is lost and the artist is where noone else has gone before. That's where Minich is (right, the crown of thorns in this painting remind me of a wimple and a mantilla).

Minich's command of materials and her original use of them are alone worth the trip to the Cathedral, at 38th and Chestnut. The show runs until Oct. 10, hours 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, or by appointment, 215 386-0234.minich, anne

permanent link   libby 7:36 PM
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Posted by libby

Post by Ed Bronstein

(We got an email yesterday from painter and architect Ed Bronstein, who attended a meeting two days ago about the plans by Artspace Projects, a non-profit agency headquartered in Minneapolis, to build one or more affordable facilities for artists and/or arts organizations in or around Philadelphia. Here's his report.--Libby and Roberta)

This was the second of two programs for artists - the first was the LINC Philadelphia Artists’ Forum held in July at Fleisher – that I found very exciting.

The target dates for the Artspace/William Penn work mentioned by Artspace Vice President Chris Velasco are that the study should be complete in the first half of 2006, with construction beginning around 18 months after that.

(That’s a pretty impressive/aggressive schedule, I think, but knowing something about Artspace’s past successes, I believe it will happen!)

The proposed projects will be for a minimum of 30 users and will consist of one or more of the following: work, live/work, performance, rehearsal, administrative, etc. space specifically for artists and/or arts organizations to rent at below market rates forever! Artspace structures their projects so that the rents will always remain affordable – in spite of the inevitable market value increase that usually occurs when artists "discover" [a neighborhood].

Questionaire now on line

Velasco's presentation was made to announce that the first step is a questionaire to be filled out by all potentially interested artists and organizations. (I just took it myself. It’s easy and quick and will keep you in the loop as the project proceeds.)

I urge all--individual artists as well as arts organizations--to check it out and support the effort. I think it will really be a boost to the arts community.

--Post by painter Ed Bronstein

permanent link   libby 6:39 PM
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Posted by libby

I got an email that directed me to a free, on-line, self-published book, How to Become a Famous Contemporary Artist, that began with these words (image, Earl Bronsteen's "Medicine Man"):

My meteoric rise to success in the art world has left many of my struggling artist friends shaking their heads (and fists). The[y] ask me over and over, "Earl, how could you, an untrained elderly, Jewish, straight person have become an overnight success in the fiercely competitive and severly overcrowded contemporary art world?"

The answer is quite simple. Artists are made not born. The art world is a very competitive business and I set out to "shop the competition." I visited many, many museums and galleries so I could see what was hot and what was ot. I took what is hot and copied and adapted it. And, the rest is history.

The book offers 100 tricks of the trade and the web page offers hilarious endorsements for the book.

The email was as charming--and unapologetically self-promotional--as the beginning of this book. Here's the e-mail:

Hi- I am self promoting a recently self-published book (see title above) which pokes fun at some art critics, galleries, museums in an hilarious 144 page free eBook at earlbronsteen.com

Zeke's loved it. The Whitney has it in its library. A top collector ordered 100 copies.

I invite you to read a few pages.

My art was recently on exhibition at O K Harris.

My only connection to Philly is that my wife was born there and Jerry & Rhoda Dersh and Acey & Bill Wolgin are fans or my work. I'll be visiting your fair city in October with a group from the Boca Raton Museum.

Earl Bronsteen

Here's my take on all this: Bronsteen has a great sense of humor. And he's pretty smart about selling. So, some struggling, earnest artist unprepared to adopt Bronsteen's copy-cat approach to art still might learn some important lessons about how the art world works from this book, and laugh a little along the way.bronsteen, earl

permanent link   libby 5:46 PM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly includes my fall round-up of great upcoming shows. And on the art page, my review of Shelley Spector's Painted Bride exhibit, "I am on Your Shoulders." Below is the Spector review and under that is the fall round-up.
spector, shelley
Little Minyons


I recently picked Shelley Spector and one of her minyons up at the studio, and we drove over to the Painted Bride where the artist was installing her show "I Am on Your Shoulders." It's her first solo exhibit in three years and her first ever to involve motors, installation and music-though not her first to involve minyons, which appeared in a tinier version in her last solo exhibit held at the Museum of Jewish Art at Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

(image is the artist posing in front of "A Flower in the Clouds: Portrait of Becky." See bigger.)

Spector, sculptor of finely crafted assemblages, most of them human figures, got in the car and put the wood and glass minyon, about the size of a kindergartner, in the back seat lying down. The minyon (a Hebrew word referring to the quorum of people needed to officially recite prayers) was one of 10 in the two-part exhibit, which includes "Life on Earth" in the downstairs gallery and "Above the Clouds" in the upstairs space. The exhibit is a celebration of departed loved ones that ranges from stately and solemn to giddy.

I asked the artist and gallerist why the emphasis on the dearly departed and death.

She said her life was touched by death early on. Her father Edward Spector died when she was 9. "When you have a death in the family when you're little, that's a long time to think about it," she says. In the last three years the artist has been touched again by loss. "Becky [Westcott] died; my cousin died; my sister's sister-in-law died; Hankus, my cat, died. The theme [of the exhibit] comes from thinking about death."



But the exhibit's focus isn't really death. It's a celebration of life, including the lives of the departed. And while there are aspects that are solemn, ritualistic and poignant, overall the show feels like a group hug by the artist of all souls both living and dead.

(image is "I am on your shoulders," detail)

There are participatory elements that will surely be cathartic for many people. Viewers are invited to add the names and a memento of their loved ones to vessels provided. By the end, there'll be an archive of the departed and a kind of new community of living souls united through the show.

If that all sounds like rather sober material for an art exhibit, it is. But that's just half the story. The second act upstairs, "Above the Clouds," is where it gets giddy.

"Above the Clouds" is where you get a change in the atmospheric conditions-from somber to jovial and from still to swirling. Climbing the stairs, you hear the toot and wail of klezmer music. Then you see them-tiny carved figures of departed souls, flying like supermen and women in three circles near the ceiling like some blessed three-ring circus in the sky. The music mix-six songs from the Klezmer Conservatory Band and other bands selected by the artist-swings with that lyrical Oriental loopiness characteristic of the genre. The whole thing is theatrical and magical, like Fellini's parade at the end of 8 1/2 or like the second-line parade of a jazz funeral.
seidman, anne


The walls are pale blue, and the whirling figures cast shadows that imply legions of angels. The figures, carved out of particle board and made to look like individuals with shoes and dresses, pants and tops-no angel's wings-pass in mesmerizing rhythm. Little wooden clouds dot the floor like so much scenery. The whole thing, mechanized by heavy-duty disco ball motors, is childlike and completely lovable.

(image is "Above the Clouds" detail. See bigger)

The music's snappy rhythm evokes the dance, something near to the artist's heart. Spector's mother was a dance teacher, and the artist has taken dance seriously all her life. "Klezmer has a happy/sad quality. Like this show, it's a celebration, but sober. It's like the way you have to be," she says.

This is a breakthrough show for the artist. Not only did she produce an installation that's participatory and that expresses both the happy and sad sides of her core being and philosophy of life and community, she made the work in a new (for her) way, using scrap wood ("junk wood," she called it) instead of fine wood.




There's plywood, masonite and particle board, scraps and leftovers from walls and cabinets torn down in a rehab project at her house. She has wood scraps from other people. In effect, it's a community of wood scraps used to make new individuals and new community. The recycling of materials echoes the show's theme of people standing on the shoulders of their forbearers to move forward and upward.

(image is the minyon all facing east)

Spector has a way of creating a community around her wherever she is. Here she's forging a new group of viewers and friends who will see and participate in this celebration of life.

"Shelley Spector: I Am on Your Shoulders"
Through Oct. 22. Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St. 215.925.9914.

"RAW" Deal

Fishtown's "Operation" is the beginning of a great fall art season.


Philadelphia is bursting with art this fall-high-energy exhibits and events from Center City to the suburbs. Right now the season's don't-miss show is in Fishtown: the 62-artist "Operation RAW." Next month's outstanding production is the Oct. 29 "Slide Show" by Zoe Strauss in South Philadelphia. And in November the community-minded project "TC Goes to School" at the Levy Gallery at Moore College pairs outsider-influenced TC Campuzano and at-risk students of Vare Elementary School with whom he's been working.

(image is what looked like a tattoo being applied at the opening of Operation RAW. I'm not sure if it was a real tattoo or a marker drawing on the person's back. See bigger.)

Here's a peek at a few other things I'm excited about.

"Operation RAW"

Don't miss this show. Most of the artists invited by Jane Irish to participate in the antiwar-themed show at the Ice Box Project Space on American Street worked over the summer to make something new. The passionate outpourings that resulted-each more sophisticated, poignant and barbed than the next-are unprecedented in recent Philadelphia art history. Surprising works by Nicholas Kripal and Richard Hricko lead the pack in an exhibit that has the power to leave you in tears. This is a benchmark show, and one that'll be remembered for years.

"Zoe Strauss: Slide Show"
gamble, sarah


Pew fellow Zoe Strauss debuts her second "Slide Show" soiree on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. at 1010 Front St. Like a magic-lantern revue of old, Strauss' slides are photographic images from her Philadelphia Public Art Project set to music-a mix of rock, jazz and hip-hop from the artist's iPod. The theatrical entertainment that results is a hybrid of public performance and art that's monumental, community-spirited and fun. Free, but seating is limited. Reserve your place by emailing info@zoestrauss.com or call 267.250.4158.

(image is Strauss photo "30th + Wharton don't like drug.")

Brooklyn Comes to PAFA

Two Brooklyn-based artists raise questions about art at PAFA this fall: Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz in the Morris Gallery and Ellen Harvey in the Furness building's upstairs rotunda. Muniz and Harvey are both image "translators" who work with extant images from art history and tweak them-in very different ways-to make points about the value and commodification of art, topics that should be on all art lovers' front burners.

Muniz makes replicas of art using nonstandard materials like drizzled chocolate or confetti, creating sly subversions of serious art-history warhorses. The artist takes color photographs of them, and that's his art: a picture twice removed from the source that's sometimes better than the original.

Harvey's "Mirror," a PEI-funded project opening Oct. 15, will position large mirrors in the museum's rotunda that reflect the building on itself. Harvey's mirrors have been etched on the reverse with images that are architectural renderings of PAFA's interior. The etching will create a ghost image on the mirror's surface that will turn what'http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs seen into an X-ray image of the Victorian PAFA.

Fleisher Challenge


Challenge 1 and 2 exhibitions this fall have plucked students right out of the M.F.A. graduating classes in the city. That quick turnaround from student to Challenge grant winner is symptomatic of the increasingly high level of sophistication and professional preparedness among the young artists coming out of the city's graduate programs.

(image is detail of a large collage work by Kip Deeds from his Challenge 1 exhibit. See bigger.)



Sarah Gamble (Challenge 1), a painter from Penn, and Penelope Rakov (Challenge 2), a ceramic artist from Tyler, are artists to watch. Kip Deeds and Mauro Zamora (in Challenge 1 and 2, respectively) are also artists on the way up included in what appears to be another strong Challenge year.

(image is detail of a wall of drawings by Sarah Gamble from her Challenge 1 exhibit)

In-Town Delights

Gallery Joe opens its fall season First Friday in October with something new, a group show called "Water Color" with 12 artists, some Joe regulars and other new names. Like other smart galleries here, Joe's gallerist Becky Kerlin has been taking her show on the road, participating in international art fairs near and far. Joe got invited to participate in the prestigious "Aqua Art Miami" fair the first week in December that runs during the huge Art Basel Miami.

These big fairs are great networking opportunities. Not only do they benefit the gallery and its artists, they're great for Philadelphia as well, making connections with collectors outside the city and planting the seeds for future visits here to look and buy. The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Board should help underwrite our galleries' expenses to participate. It would benefit the city to do so.

Elsewhere


My must-see list and yours too should include these great shows: Charles Burwell at Swarthmore; the Faux Show at Klein Art Gallery; Francis Gregory DiFronzo at Rosenfeld; Anne Seidman and Susan Hagen at Schmidt-Dean; Susan Fenton and Mary Murphy at Schmidt-Dean; and the Alumni of 1801 show.




(bottom two images are "Periscope" by Anne Seidman and "Lost Army," detail by Susan Hagen, from their show at Schmidt-Dean Gallery. See the Hagen image bigger.)

"Operation RAW"
Through Sept. 25. Ice Box Project Space, Crane Art Center, 1400 N. American St. 215.923.0245.
"Zoe Strauss: Slide Show"
Sat., Oct. 29, 7pm. 1010 Front St. 267.250.4158.
"TC Campuzano Goes to School"
Nov. 11-Dec. 21. Levy Gallery, Moore College of Art & Design, 20th St. and the Pkwy. 215.965.4045.
"Vik Muniz: Remastered"
Sat., Sept. 17, 6-8pm. Through Nov. 27. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad and Cherry sts. 215.972.7630.
hagen, susan
"Ellen Harvey: Mirror"
Fri., Oct. 14, 6-8pm. Through Jan. 8. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad and Cherry sts. 215.972.7600. www.pafa.org
"Fleisher Challenge 1"
Through Oct. 8. 719 Catharine St. 215.922.3456.
"Fleisher Challenge 2"
Oct. 14-Nov. 12. 719 Catharine St. 215.922.3456.
"Water Color"
Oct. 7-Nov. 19. Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St. 215.592.7752.
"Charles Burwell: Paintings and Drawings"
Through Oct. 2. List Gallery, Swarthmore College. 610.328.7811.
"Faux Show"
Nov. 11–Dec. 30. Klein Art Gallery, 3600 Market St. 215.966.6188.
"Francis Gregory DiFronzo: Recent Paintings"
Through Oct. 2. Rosenfeld Gallery, 113 Arch St. 215.922.1376.
"Anne Seidman: Watching" and "Susan Hagen: The Lost Army"
Through Oct. 15. Schmidt-Dean Gallery, 1710 Sansom St. 215.569.9433.
"Susan Fenton" and "Mary Murphy"
Oct.-Nov. Schmidt-Dean Gallery, 1710 Sansom St. 215.569.9433. www.schmidtdean.com
"The Alumni of 1801"
Sat., Sept. 17 and Sun., Sept. 18, 3pm. Through Oct. 16. 1801 N. Howard St. 267.240.9682.
deeds, kip
strauss, zoe

permanent link   roberta 2:25 PM
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Posted by roberta

I've been meaning to tell you about Lee Tusman, one of the artists in the 40th St. Artist in Residence program. I spent an hour with Tusman in his studio a few weeks back when his lunch truck project photos and quilt were on exhibit at the 40th St. Residency's gallery, Airspace.
(image is Tusman, wearing an altered shirt he made standing in front of a quilt representing the lunch truck project.)

Tusman is an activist artist who graduated from Brandeis in 2004 (sociology major). He is outside the credentialed art establishment. He doesn't paint or draw; he didn't get a degree in art.

But he's a passionate maker of things like quilts and clothes and a believer in using art as a vehicle for social change. And it should come as no surprise that his heroes include ACT-UP, Mierle Ukeles and Michael Moore.

(image left is Tusman in his studio, and right is a photo of one of the lunch truck vendors in West Philadelphia)

I've organized our free-associative conversation here to give you a flavor of the voluble artist whose voice I found refreshing and lively and whose art (quilts, clothes and the Lunch Truck project) I admire for their straight-forwardness and their sense of art as fun and essential.

Q. So how did you start making art if you're a sociology major?
A. I studied art and social change at Brandeis. I started the Art and Activism club. I love street art -- Bob 316 and El Toro. I check the Wooster Collective website every day. I consider myself a remix artist. At Brandeis I did an after school program for kids -- middle school kids. [It was at this program that he began cutting up shirts and piecing them back together and creating new shirts from old.] This summer I taught art at the Red Cross School. I like it alot but I want to do something in public. I probably will do a musical performance at the Fringe.

(image is a quilt "Frankie says Relax.")

Q. You are a musician?
A. We have a trio, "Sputtering Kettle." I have a Digeree Doo. I play a little -- percussion. We'll do something like a call and response on the street.

Q. Where did you grow up?
A. I was born in Manayunk then lived in Overbrook and Penn Wynne. I went to Lower Merion. High School. I was the "Voice of the Aces."



Q. Where did you learn to sew?
A. In middle school. My mom did embroidery. My mom went to Uarts, Jaci Tusman. I started doing quilts last summer. But I collect t-shirts. I've collected them for a while. People know about it and give them to me. I have so many I started making quilts. There's a curator, Renee Riccardo who showed one at Arena Gallery.

(image right is Tusman demonstrating the serger sewing machine.)



Q. [There was a large quilt of the Lunch Truck project hanging in his show. It's made from t-shirts and pillow cases. There's no backing to it so I asked if he ever put a backing on them?
A. I don't back them. I want people to see the back. I'm not a fine crafter. (another altered shirt)



Q. Tell me more about the Lunch Truck project.
A. I don't know if it's activism but this was very collaborative -- with people. The first thing I did, I went to the University City District and got a map. I researched on Chowhound and Craig's List went and talked with the truck owners. People were very friendly. Then I posted online "Does anybody want to eat with me at the food trucks?"

(image right is Tusman's sewing machine, a serger, and below left is the UCD map with pins showing locations of food trucks)


[He apparently ate at all the trucks in West Philadelphia. Consider him an expert. He doesn't eat beef so he can't tell you about the cheesesteaks but he knows about everything else they serve. I asked him if he'd been to the Temple trucks, which I remember passing one time and thinking they were this amazing presence on the street.]
A. I've been to Temple. Gigi's Belly Fillers. That's like Renes and Denises near 30th St. Station. Soul food. They're open til midnight. Probably for the Post Office workers.


Q. What did you learn about the truck phenom?
A. There's a community that goes to the trucks. You see that in the lines. and people give you tips on what to order. I got a tip. For Buis at 38th and Locust. Get the breakfast sandwich and when they ask if you want salt pepper ketchup say yes. It was great! I'll continue to eat at the food trucks. I got into the whole food thing through a class "Possibilities for change in American communities." We studied 20th Century social movements. At the end of the class we went on a bus to the South and talked to civil rights leaders (Bob Moser, Helen Prejean, Samuel Rockby. That was amazing. We studied everything. And we ate in a lot of restaurants. I decided to study the small restaurants as community building places. I hate chain restaurants. But unfortunately people like them. They say, "Oh, we've made it," [when a Wendy's or McDonalds comes to town.]

[Ed. note: Here's a NY Times story I found chronicling the Brandeis students' trip. (username: sokref1@comcast.net, password: lrrfartblog)

(image above is a friend who ate lunch with Tusman at Taco Pal truck)

Q. So did anybody respond to your invitation to eat with you at the food trucks?
A. Lots of people. Aaron Levy (of Slought Foundation) and I had lunch a few times...at Ramis at 40th and Locust ...or Maleeks at 40th and Market. I'm working as a proofreader for Aaron on his book "The Revolt of the Bees."

[One of his favorite stories about the lunch trucks is of a woman who responded to the chowhound invitation. She had never eaten at a food truck and had some issues with them in general -- like sanitation. Tusman and the woman went to have lunch at a truck and she ordered something that was a-typical of what the truck offered and hated it...and later emailed him that she would never eat at a food truck again!]

(image right is quilt from Gees Bend)

Q. What did you do after graduation?
A. I had to find a job that was creative and not a desk job. I was a curatorial assistant at the Fabric Workshop. I worked at the Opera in New Orleans. But that ended and I moved here.

Q. Tell me about the t-shirt business.
A. I call them "Frankenshirts." It grew out of teaching kids to cut up clothes and sew them.

Q. Do you know about the Gees Bend quilters?
A. I didn't know about them before.

Q. What kind of art do you like?
A. I love street art. I love cartoons and graphic novels like American Splendor. I've been reading a lot of that lately. I'm a member of the Visionary Art Museum. It's the only museum I'm a member of. I was reading American Splendor and I ran into Harvey Pekar at the museum. I took my mom there on mothers day. I saw Harvey Pekar and I tried to give him one of my shirts. He didn't want to take it at first.

He said "I don't have any pockets...(meaning he didn't have a way to carry it)." So I said to Joyce (Pekar's wife) who was there with him, "How about you, Joyce, will you take one for him?" She said: "He has to carry his own stuff...(meaning she wouldn't carry it either)" Ultimately Pekar took the shirt.

Q. Tell me about this sewing machine. It looks industrial strength.
A. It's a serger. [He demonstrates how the machine can sew those heavy-duty stiches to finish seams on t-shirts.)

Q. What's coming up next?
A. I'm working on a commission now for someone.

Q. [He's got a tablecloth on a table and it's made from disparate cloths stitched together. It kind of looks like his stuff.] Did you make this tablecloth?
A. No I got it in Boston. It was made by an old lady who was learning to quilt and she didn't want it. Her finished stuff after she learned to quilt was boring as hell but I loved this.

Tusman is in the group show at Airspace with the other 40th st. artists right now and he showed his clothing designs in the Post-Apocalyptic Fashion Show last weekend at Highwire. Here's the website with his designs from that show. And look for him around Old City during the Fringe. He'll be out with his band doing improv music. And here's the artist's website, Voodoo Artist.


I'm looking forward to eating at a food truck with Tusman sometime soon.
tusman, lee

permanent link   roberta 6:17 PM
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Libby and I ran into one of our favorite artists, Sarah McEneaney, Friday night at the opening of two of our favorite artists, Anne Seidman and Susan Hagen at Schmidt-Dean Gallery, one of our favorite galleries. McEneaney was bubbling with surprise because earlier that day she saw her name mentioned in a Roberta Smith review of Danica Phelps'show at LFL Gallery.

Phelps makes autobiographical art and so does McEneaney. And apparently Roberta Smith said that if Phelps ever did "x" she'd be making "wonderfully autobiographical art like that of Sarah McEneaney."

(image is McEneaney's painting in the Operation RAW exhibit at the Icebox.)

We thought that was a historic moment for Sarah because she's now passed from being a notable artist to a benchmark artist and in fact the standard against which autobiographical art should be measured. Yeah!

Here's the Times article's link. (user: sokref1@comcast.net, password: lrrfartblog)
And here's the pertinent paragraph:

What would happen if Ms. Phelps were to swerve - if, for example, her rows of color and her images broke ranks and mingled? (With luck, perhaps something akin to the wonderfully autobiographical paintings of Sarah McEneaney.) Such a merger might make Ms. Phelps's work more ordinary for a while, but it also might lead someplace where there are greater visual challenges and rewards.

The Phelps show is up til Oct. 1.
mceneaney, sarah

permanent link   roberta 5:06 PM
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Maybe it's Martha Stewart who got me to the point of writing about George W. Bush, who, after all, is a sort of victim of his class and upbringing. And then I can certainly credit my inspiration to the Malcolm Gladwell piece on health insurance in the New Yorker, a television interview of an author who wrote about a 1929 volcano that wiped out New Orleans. And then there's the Iraq saga, gas prices and finally the hurricane (top, photo by Larry Fink).

I have been asking myself what the hurricane and Iraq sagas have in common and why. My answer is they both required attention to infrastracture--planning and money--and both cases the president and his men ignored warnings that their actions or lack of actions would result in problems.

Why would people who must have a brain or two in their heads to get where they are fail so miserably I wondered, and then why would they deny the failures in the face of overwhelming evidence?

Ideology, not thinking

Gladwell, in a way, provided the answer. Gladwell's point was that the Bush administration was ideologically opposed to the role of protecting its citizens. The same kind of thinking can be seen in the Social Security privatization that Bush was pushing--each of us must pull our own weight to insure ourselves for retirement and for catastrophic health problems (sculpture by Dirk Staschke, "Bush Group").

Bushism is Calvinism

To put it another way, the Bushites are Calvinists, sons of the first Europeans on our shores, who believed that wealth was a sign of worthiness, of grace, while poverty was a sign of moral turpitude.

And to put it still another way, the Bushites believe that America is wealthy and great because of its worthiness. They believe that God has blessed America because we have liberty and capitalism throughout the land.

As for cities with extreme poverty, their residents must be failing as capitalist, and so they deserve no help from the federal government. At least that seems to be the philosophy behind the administration's actions.

To put it still another way, the failure to support the needs of impoverished cities is just like the failure to support the rail system. It is a failure to recognize the greater good involves subsidies to infrastructure and to our fellow human beings. Classic capitalism does not automatically lead to prosperity for everyone.

Iraq--capitalism's failure

So now I'm up to Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld and the conservative ideologues like Wolfowitz et al. all believed that if they toppled Saddam Hussein and brought democracy, liberty and capitalism to Iraq, the Iraqis would bow down in gratitude, that the merchant class would take over, and they would rebuild Iraq, because it would pay them to do so. The money earned by the new capitalists would spread rapidly through the society, well-being would automatically flow with the new wealth, and Iraqis would live happily ever after (image by Mear).

The Bushites felt guiltless about giving expensive contracts to Halliburton and Bechtel because these are capitalists (good ol' guys in Bushese) and therefore deserving of whatever wealth they can amass in Bushism.

Furthermore, because they were bringing Christian values to a Muslim land, they were saving them. I have to believe that there's an assumption in Bushism that includes a belief that Iraqis can't wait to become born agains.

All of this thinking, this layer of ideology and presuppositions, meant to Rummy and his gang that there was no need to plan for post-invasion Iraq.

So what does all this have to do with New Orleans? The people there are poor. Bushism says that poor people do not have God on their side. If they want to help themselves, they should reinforce the levees by themselves. If they fix the levees by themselves, they will earn God's approval (image, Michael Moore and George W. Bush).

Let's not forget this is the administration that didn't plan to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq on the assumption that the glories of capitalism would lead to the Iraqis taking care of this themselves because it would pay for them to do what would benefit their capitalist ventures.

And let's not forget this is the administration that couldn't hear the dire warnings before the invasion.

And also let's not forget this is the administration that assumed they would have a quick, clean victory with just a few soldiers in place--because God was on their side, and Hussein was in the Axis of Evil (image, a Thai cartoon on the street, from my daughter's trip to Southeast Asia).

They could not hear the warnings that their fantasies might not be so, because their fantasies were based on ideological and religious faith. But ideology and religion are not such good ways to face real-world problems.

This same blindness to the need for government support of infrastructure is behind the FEMA budget cuts and the refusal to acknowledge the urgency of shoring up the levees way before Katrina was a twinkle in the eye of anyone's storm.

Part of what I don't understand about this whole religion thing, the whole assumption that God is on the president's side, is why isn't he asking why God has set this hurricane and the attendant disasters and failures upon his administration.

Martha Stewart for example

Which brings me around to Martha Stewart.

The world of George Bush, and Martha Stewart, is a world of entitlement. They assume they deserve what they have. And they assume that those who don't have as much don't deserve as much. They also assume that their friends and connections all are deserving as well. And so a handout to Halliburton of millions and billions does not seem wrong to them (some other Bush handouts--the FEMA job to Brown, the failure to call a halt to gas gouging by Bush's oil fraternity). After all, they are deserving in Bush's eyes. But a small handout to a poor person is wrong because poor people aren't deserving in their eyes, or they wouldn't be poor. This is classic American Calvinism, and disturbing (image, Josh O.S.'s image of the Bushes dancing).

This morning, my paper said that Stewart was a sweeter, softer, mellower, chastened by her time in prison. Softer to me means more empathetic. You can't be empathetic if you're a wealthy person and believe in Bushism--because you believe that people deserve what they get.

But in many ways, I have to admire Stewart more than Bush even with her old persona. After all, she worked hard for what she got. Dubya was born with a silver spoon, and according to Molly Ivins' "Shrub," he's been carried by his father's friends and his pack of good ol' boys, without an iota of productivity. Yet somehow, he thinks he's deserving of all this. He's right. If there's a God, God has blessed him. But not because he's worthy. It's because he's connected.

Not his brother's keeper

I find it strange that he who thinks he walks with God does not think he needs to be his brother's keeper, except if that brother is named Jeb.

I heard on "Meet the Press" author John Barry, who wrote the book "Rising Tide" about a 1927 Mississippi River flood that devasted New Orleans. Barry said the event led to a change in how Americans viewed the proper role of government. Until then, he said, Americans thought everyone was responsible for his own success. The flood, according to the book blurb "inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever." Americans began to think the government should take action and should take care of its citizens, even the poor and the sick and the huddled masses.

Bush and the Republicans have been trying to turn around that trend in government. They have lost sight of the needs of others.

I propose that Bushism is dangerous because it involves a lack of imagination and a lack of vision. It has twice proven the administration's blindness to the realities of situations and an inability to plan realistically, with stupifyingly disastrous results.

I say let's send Dubya to prison. Maybe he'll learn a little empathy for those to whom life has not been so kind. Maybe he'll question some of the flawed ideology behind so many decisions that have hurt everyone but those who need the help of the government the least.

permanent link   libby 5:05 PM
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The excellent curator of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will speak at the Print Center this season. She's not the only one of interest.

Kate Ware has been opening eyes in that dog of a hallway at the PMA, creating small, interesting shows from the collection, including the excellent "Mavericks of Color" show now hanging (see posts here and here). She'll speak at the Print Center Nov. 3.

In a schedule with a number of attractions, another highlight is a series of portfolio reviews, with Sheryl Conkelton, Amy Lipton and Miriam Seidel. Conkelton is Tyler School of Art's director of exhibitions and public programs; Lipton is Abington Art Center's recently arrived curator; and Seidel, curator at the galleries at the Gershman Y also has written for Art in America. A fee of $15 for members, $30 for others, applies.

Tomorrow's speaker is photographer-alchemist Robert Asman, and I got a reminder about these programs from Ellie Brown, who is also on the list of speakers, along with Andrew Jeffrey Wright and Candy DePew. Check out the schedule here.

permanent link   libby 9:14 PM
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If you haven't noticed Hurong Lou Gallery, yet, it's time to stop there for clay artist Robert Winokur's exhibit, "The House."

The show is not of one house but many little houses on pedestals, each of them about the right size to house a bird.

And indeed some of the houses have birds on them or in them. But the birds are tiny--in scale for a real, small house. Made of clay slabs, the houses are reduced to just their walls, roofs, sometimes chimneys. Pretty basic.

But the end result is anything but basic. Winokur has reduced the houses to the essence of houseness--refuge under threat, shape in space, boxy shape with an inside and an outside, with windows or doors or other holes.

My fave was "The Shrine of St. Francis' Ladder," with St. Francis and a bird on his hand in the door, a ladder hung on the back, horizontal, out of reach, serving as a symbol of folly, for man cannot build a stairway way to heaven. But it also serves as a symbol of intent, of reaching toward the stars and all the wonders of nature. Whether it's a perch for St. Francis or only his bird, it's a symbol of a spiritual quest and of the wonders of the natural world (top and left, "The shrine of St. Francis' Ladder").

That kind of spirituality seems to hover over each of these houses. The pair of homely barns hung on the wall, one with a red cross on its side, one with a subtle "whitewashed" rectangle on the side, share a humble utilitarian shape against the wall/sky/landscape that suggests a love of the barn's purposes and farming as a nearly religious calling. The barns become icons (right, "Two Barns on the Wall, Whitewash, Red Cross" detail).

"Fox on the Hen House Roof," with its tiny little openings big enough for the birds but not the threat, is not only about foxes and hens. It's about us, and safety, and ingenuity--of the fox, of the hens, of the people--all God's creatures.

From a tribute to Brancusi, to a house for symbolic juicy pear shapes, each house has its own purpose and its own holy spirit residing within.


These houses, compared to some of the similar-size houses of Allan Wexler, for example, which are also quite reduced and spare, are not about mechanics or systems or ingenuity or the environment, but rather about human needs and emotions (right, Wexler work at the Philadelphia Airport).

In this time of hurricane aftermath, with people wandering the country looking for some place to call home, Winokur has provided some fundamental answers to just what a home is.winokur, robertwexler, allan

permanent link   libby 9:04 PM
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Got an alert from photographer Candace diCarlo about this New York Times article, "Critic's Notebook: Beyond Comforting the Afflicted" by Caryn James, about a new show by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council that explores how American artists' lives have changed because of 9/11. Unfortunately, some knee-jerk "patriots" have protested, under the unfair assumption that the show is anti-American (user: sokref1@comcast.net, password: lrrfartblog).

permanent link   libby 5:13 PM
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Vox Populi's Yana Balson has moved on to New York powerhouse gallery PaceWildenstein. The former Vox executive director has moved there to serve as dealer's assistant.

Under Balson, one of Philadelphia's top coop galleries gained professional style while keeping its reputation as an incubator for some of the city's best, adventurous young artists. While she served at Vox, the gallery brought in interesting out-of-town work, like Jonathan Berger's dark coney-island-of-the-mind "goner" installation, to augment the local shows. She recently curated "Point of View," a show of offbeat takes on landscape (above, a shot from Kim Collmer's "Silver Seeds" video, part of the Point of View exhibit, and below, a detail of Jonathan Berger's "goner.")


Until Vox finds a replacement, artist and Vox member Amy Adams will fill the roll of interim director. Whoever is in charge will need strong business skills to lead Vox in its search for and move to another space. Like the Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Asian Arts Initiative and Highwire, Vox is facing eviction from the Webster Building on Arch Street, which will be redeveloped for Convention Center expansion.

Adams, whom we saw Friday at the Esther Klein Gallery where she curated the "Art & Community IX: Urban Life" show, gave us the news about Balson. Adams also is exhibiting her own work this month at Vox.

Hey, good luck, Yana.collmer, kimberger, jonathanbalson, yanaadams, amy

permanent link   libby 7:46 AM
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More Towers of Light pictures from Brent Burket, who has a few more shots on his blog Heart as Arena. Burket, by the way, was asked to fire up a blog for Creative Time (he's a member of their Creative Council). I don't know how folks can juggle more than one blog at a time but my hat's off to him.










burket, brent

permanent link   roberta 7:01 AM
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Here's a photo of the Louise Barteau-Chodoff exhibit "bubblewrapture" at Carbon 14 Gallery. The news here is the gallery still hanging on and has daily evening hours after 5 p.m. I was a little earlier than that, but I saw Andrew inside and he let me in. (I also had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of his little boy. The show is only open until Sept. 17.

Barteau-Chodoff also has work up Oct. 12 in the 40th Street artists in residence program's show, along with Jessica Doyle, Delia King, Philip Ofili, Lee Tusman (by appointment only, apparently, 215-386-5115).barteau-chodoff, louise

permanent link   libby 1:52 PM
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Chuck and Iris came back to Philadelphia last night. They had made a trip to their house in uptown New Orleans and retrieved some precious things. Chuck reported that a team from the Historic New Orleans Collection -- under armed guard -- had gotten in to the museum and rescued the objects and artifacts. Iris said that a group from the LSU Medical Center had rescued the vacuum bottles containing the frozen cell lines needed for research -- although nothing else was brought out. Below are a couple of pictures from Chuck's flickr page. There are many more at his site.

Also last night, our NY correspondent, Brent Burket, wrote from his home in Brooklyn to say they were testing the lights for the "Tribute in Light," the Creative Time project memorializing the victims of the 9-11 disaster. The bottom image is the picture he sent.

I think it's important to consider both disasters together -- and to remember how a certain tough-talking, slow-acting, bottom-line programming administration has failed us twice.

Claiborne and Carrollton.


The house.
burket, brent


Inside.


"My view," Brent Burket's shot from his window last night. I uploaded it to my flickr site. See it bigger here. Here's more on the project, which will run tonight.

Tribute in Light was originally produced in 2002 by John Bennett and Gustavo Bonevardi of PROUN Space Studio, artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, architect Richard Nash Gould, and lighting designer Paul Marantz, in association with Creative Time and the Municipal Art Society. In 2003, the producers of the initial Tribute in Light, were honored that The City of New York continues to present the temporary light memorial to commemorate the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

patch, chuck

permanent link   roberta 8:38 AM
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