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Posted by libby

6-19-04. Dinner at Denny's, Normal, Illinois, by Nancy Breslin. 70-second exposure, toned silver gelatin print.

Brobdingnagian hamburgers, looming soda cups, and a surreal sense of space take over the photographs by Nancy Breslin, on display for another week at Saint Joseph's University Gallery.

I dashed over to look at this work, all taken by a classic pinhole camera, because I had seen some examples at a conference and I wanted to see more.


Lunch at Johnny Rocket's, Cedar Point, Ohio. 15-second exposure, toned silver gelatin print.

The exhibit of 23 photographs didn't disappoint, and for the pleasure of the locals, Breslin included an image taken at Murray's Delicatessen in Bala Cynwyd. The photographs' mix of vertiginous, distorted diner and restaurant architecture and the diaristic titles that include time and place, create a struggle between the quotidian and the fantastic.

Breslin places the camera on whatever flat stable surface presents itself--a table top, a window sill. On top of the surprising points of view, which are what transform the food and tableware into hieratic objects and transform the spaces into threatening vistas, the slow exposures reduce the moving people to ghostly presences.


12-30-03. Lunch at Panera, Fairfax Virginia. 45-second exposure, toned silver gelatin print

The dinners at a friend's house lack the humor and logic that make the commercial spaces make sense to me.

But somehow, in the commercial climate in which we live, that funny dominance of holy consumerist objects over the consumers themselves seems just right.

permanent link   libby 4:06 PM
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Posted by roberta

philadelphia museum and new perelman building
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Aerial view of the Philadelphia Museum and the Perelman Building. Photo courtesy of the Museum. Click to see it bigger.

Libby told you in her post about the hard hat tour we took of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's new Perelman Building. The tour was notable for helping to clarify the importance of the new building for the museum.

Not only will Perelman house two entire departments (Costumes and Textiles and Prints, Drawings and Photography) but it will have the conservation departments, a library, an educator's resource center, beautiful exhibition spaces -- and the director's office.

This will not be a satellite building so much as a central hub -- not a backup hard drive for storage but a power center and a show piece.

Everyone at the Museum is excited about this. Director Anne d'Harnoncourt explained that the museum had expanded into its last possible nook and cranny in 1976, and she called Perelman "A great addition to the museum which hasn't gone outside its footprint since 1898."

Perelman is the first huge step in the master plan to expand, restore and improve the museum d'Harnoncourt said.

The museum's 30,000 costumes will be housed, conserved and shown in Perelman. The roughly 150,000 prints, drawings, photos will likewise be housed and shown in a gallery dedicated to them.

The Perelman building has quirks, d'Harnoncourt said: It's a long, slender building with a wrap-around. But they think it will be a fabulous space for sculpture she said.

Architect Richard Gluckman spoke of how the Perelman building is less a "renovation" than a restoration, intervention and creation.

When we got to the top floor where the painting conservation department will be d'Harnoncourt -- who had been enthusiastic throughout piping up with her information, insights and thoughts in every room we visited -- became absolutely passionate about the northern light in the chamber that would let the PMA's conservators, for the first time ever, work under painterly conditions to conserve and restore paintings. It was a moment.

From her new office in Perelman d'Harnoncourt's view looks up the Ben Franklin Parkway. As she pointed out, she can see "the mothership" across the street, and she can see City Hall, another building with history and ties to the museum.

Anyway, I'm happy to see the Museum grow into Perelman. Among other things, we'll all be able to enjoy the photography exhibits on flat land in a dedicated gallery instead of in the carpeted ramp space that now serves as a photo gallery.

Summer of 2007 is the target date for opening of Perelman. That's like tomorrow. No wonder they're all excited. Much work to do in not a lot of time. I have photos of our hard hat visit in a flickr set.

P.S. One of the small details I noticed on the tour were two cracked windows. Somehow I hope they don't fix them. The idea of the cracked glass in Perelman winking at Duchamp's Large (cracked) Glass piece in the Museum's modern collection cracks me up.

permanent link   roberta 8:23 AM
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Posted by libby

Love in the Afternoon, tempera on panel, 1992; the window, a repeating metaphor for the artist, looks out on the wide open spaces that rise up at a scary angle in a typical Wyeth approach/avoidance conflict

So many of us plan to reject Andrew Wyeth before we even get to his 70-year retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

First kiss of death: he's popular and accessible. Second kiss of death: familiarity breeds contempt--his paintings are so familiar that they seem like cliches. Third kiss of death: We know far too much about his personal life much to his and our chagrin. Fourth kiss of death: He's so conventional and if we never see another Chadds Ford or Maine landscape, we'll live happily ever after. Fifth and final kiss of death: He has inspired a legion of annoying imitators like Bo Bartlett.


Public Sale, tempera on panel, 1943, depicts the sale of a family farm, the loss reflected in the landscape, the choppy patterns of the hay and tire tracks a surprise

But, as usual, every time I go kicking and screaming to a PMA exhibit, because I'm such a know-it-all, I get kicked in the butt.

So I have to say, after my tour around the paintings, that I have to forgive the guy (except I can't really forgive him for spawning the parade of overwrought surrealists working in this region).

I'm not saying there isn't some truth in my list of five fatal points. But there's also some truth in the work, which transcends the conventional wisdom.

Just to backtrack a little, the artist, born in 1917 and not quite 20 when he has his first solo exhibit, at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, has another the next year in a New York gallery, MacBeth. The gallery sells out his first watercolor show! He has been living off his art ever since. He is still painting. He's a phenom.

The work's superficial willingness to please--its ostensible realism rooted in the world that we see--is mostly on the surface. A harsh undercurrent suffuses a lot of the work, delivering nasty surprises with formidable technique. And the real in the work is not really real at all. Like all paintings, reality has been transformed, edited and put to other purposes, some of them deeply emotional and autobiographical, some of them aesthetic, and some of them in the service of narrative.

When the those elements meet and are most successful, the paintings deliver.


A man who eats with a knife, his dinner awaiting, and a log with teeth in Wyeth's Groundhog Day, tempera on panel, 1959; the man is Chadds Ford farmer Karl Koerner

For artists and students wondering about how painters make their choices, a gallery exhibiting the series of sketches leading up to two of the paintings is not to be missed. Groundhog Day started out as figure studies, only to become something else entirely. The figures disappear in the final product, but their presence remains in metaphorical objects and their relationships. This is a scary painting, a portrait of Chadds Ford farmer Karl Kuerner and his dog as a duo with sharp edges, of Kuerner's subservient wife Anna, and ultimately of the artist as both naive and not so naive. The late-day sunshine shining on the domestic scene of a set table belies the message of menace.


Wind from the Sea, tempera on Masonite, 1947; it's a crowd pleaser

So many of the paintings reflect the mixed emotions of the painter, who veils himself and his subjects in layers of masks. Looking from indoors out, the windows become his eyes, but what is outside is vast and free and unsafe. The inside is compressed, confined and maybe not as safe as it seems. He is a man haunted by deaths, such as the untimely death of his father, killed by a passing train, the deaths of his friends, his own dreamt-of death during surgery, and the annual death of the seasons.


Her Room, tempera on panel, 1963, is wife Betsy's room, in perfect order, a nautilus as a metaphor--for her? for him? Wyeth admitted that in some sense he was wife Betsy's prisoner according to Curator Kathleen Foster

It was too hard for this young man, home schooled and from a family of painters, to get away from narrative and representation. But he discovered how to use those conventions do deliver ultimately duplicitous paintings that at once reveal so much and so little. Ironically, the way the show is presented is rich with gossipy details of what's and who's behind the paintings (although it has the good taste to include only one painting only of his then-secret model Helga Testorf, and does offer a whole gallery of portraits of his wife Betsy).

All in all this is quite an interesting show.


homespun giftshop fare

I have to mention the gift-shop kitsch, which highlights things like fall-colored leaves, harvest-related objets in baskets and other touches of nostalgia for nature and farm life. Pretty funny.

And also check out the fabulous Kate Javens painting, "Named for Andrew Furuseth," on your way out of the show, in the Dorrance Corridor, part of an exhibit, Andrew Wyeth in Context.

One more thing: There are Amtrak and hotel packages if you're coming here from out of town, as well as concurrent Wyeth exhibitions at the Brandywine River Museum and the Delaware Art Museum.

Guest curator Ann Knutson organized the exhibit for the High Museum in Atlanta, and the PMA's American art curator Kathleen A. Foster oversaw its installation here. They and PMA Curator of Modern Art Michael Taylor contributed to the catalog.

permanent link   libby 3:27 PM
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Posted by roberta

So says Roberta Smith in her review today of Kara Walker's show "After the Deluge" at the Met now through July 30. "Deluge" is an installation created by Walker using her own works and those she selected from the museum's collection to illustrate her forever right on target themes about race and ruin in the US and in the world. Here's the link to the Smith review -- which has a couple great pictures.

Kara Walker - Review - Art - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York Times

permanent link   roberta 7:56 AM
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Posted by libby

Panoramic impressions of landscape from Fran Gallun (iridescent craypas, gouache and pencil)

Somewhat related to Dayton Castleman's windmills (see previous post), my friend Fran Gallun gave a talk in conjunction with her participation in a curated group show at Hopkins House, that sweet little building along the river in Haddon Township run by the Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission. I say it's related because Gallun, like Castleman, is concerned with matters spiritual in her work.

After the talk, Fran offered a peek at her most recent work--hot off the presses--created during a mini-retreat she created for herself in Israel a few weeks ago. The panoramic views on long strips of paper popped with color and variety. In a way, they were the antithesis of traditional travel landscapes, giving up the literal for a very personal take on the spaces and atmosphere she saw around her--a mix of awestruck and down-to-earth.


Glenn Hudson's pit-fired vases

The exhibit is a celebration of the art community/coop and includes the clay, photos, jewelry and mixed media work from 12 local artists who share space--all mainly potters except for Gallun and Antonio Puri (he will give a talk March 29, 7 to 9 p.m.)

Others in the exhibit are Angel Andrews, Xiomara Babilonia, Linda Beck, Paula Faro, Kathy Foster, Stacey Harris, Glenn Hudson, Dona Musiano, Stacey Rashkin and Jack Seymour.

permanent link   libby 11:56 AM
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Posted by libby

Tilting at Giants, by Dayton Castleman

The physical presence of Dayton Castleman's windmill installation, "Tilting at Giants," at the Broad St. Ministries surprised me, even after reading Roberta's post and seeing the images. Bringing my memory of modern windmills that generate electricity to the exhibit, I unreasonably expected the windmills to be tall and graceful and in motion.

What they are is high-tech-looking, somewhat short and stocky, and stunningly inert. In that soaring sanctuary space, the windmills suddenly become metaphors for people, unable to catch the wind, unable to work efficiently in a universe where atmosphere is a condition of existence. In thinking these thoughts, I was blown away.

permanent link   libby 11:30 AM
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Posted by roberta

DSCN0348.jpg
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Installation shot of the artist's studio. Click image to see it bigger.

Studio visit with John Tallman

I met John Tallman in late January at his studio in Kensington, an area that's being studio-fied as more artists move northward in search of affordable digs. Tallman's is one of two studios upstairs in a large red brick building on Orchard St. that might have been a factory at one time. Now it's got an auto fixit shop on the ground floor. As we looked out the studio window facing east, Tallman pointed out several other factory-like buildings that he knows are being rehabbed for artists.





Yellowization, paint on canvas or wood

Tallman, a Tyler BFA (1991) and University of Washington MFA (1993) -- both degrees are in painting -- said he had been out of the country for five years teaching English and art in Korea.

For the six months he'd been back he had been working on his art and looking to get hooked in to the Philadelphia scene. In fact he was already connected on one level, having landed a solo show at Abington Art Center's community gallery.

The artist, who worked on a mural project in Korea and also was art director and cd artist for several albums of music by the multi-national band Dabang Band, is married to a Korean woman, Kyong Hee (Connie). They have a pre-school age son, Jacob.




Chinbookdong, acrylic on plexiglas.

As we talked and my eyes became accustomed to the bright day glow universe I saw laid out on walls, the floor and in stacks here and there, I became more and more interested in what seemed to me an aesthetic unlike what I was used to seeing in Philadelphia, something both spare and raw; something foreign in its color sensibility, and proudly anti-art.

While I didn't think so at the time, I now believe Tallman's work has some affinity with Richard Tuttle and with David Goerk -- only it's Tuttle and Goerk run through an Asian blender where Buddhism merges with plastic tchotchkes and florid-colored kimonos.

"Being in Korea is an assault on the eyes," he said when I asked about the colors, which I assumed were Asian-influenced. I don't know anyone using these craft-store shades in such intense saturation.

Cities like Jeonju, where Tallman had been an assistant professor of English for those five years are full of bright-colored and lettered sign boards in the commercial strips the artist said. The city is densely populated and "It's all very quick, cheap and flat," he added, describing the Korean urban aesthetic.

"When I got there there was a cognitive dissonance. Everything was the opposite of your expectations. My work at that time was a way to process the environment The work had a vacancy to it."




Shijang, which means market in Korean. This is the pink piece he put in the market in Jeonju.

Tallman did a guerilla piece in an outdoor market when he was there. He made some hot pink boxes and set them out in the marketplace where all the vendors were selling apples and pears. It might have been an assertion of his self into the foreign environment. Here am I, I'm like you -- and not like you. I am reflecting you.

Some people didn't get it. Others got it and appreciated his boxes as meta-strawberries.




Portfolio of cut out drawings on CVS poster board.

I asked him what his earlier work was like and he said it was a little cartoony. He pulled out a large portfolio of drawings made on CVS's finest poster board and the works, like the paintings and sculptures, felt new and exciting -- cryptic, and all on paper cut in funny, odd ways, almost like stickers but not. What the drawings most reminded me of was runes, but done with a comic sensibility.

Tallman's works are in the Drawing Center slide registry in New York and he told me he'd been up there several times since being back, showing a curator his drawings.

In a novel approach to merging his paintings and sculpture into one world, the artist has been making molds of his paintings and casting them anew in resin. He's concerned with the 3-D-ness of his work. In fact, he's an installation artist and his thinking is all about relationships -- how this piece relates to that wall and doorway and how everything flows around the room.

In his studio, the works felt like visual, pre-verbal Morse code. The works were grouped like this: 3 circular things together here...space...pile of square things on the floor there...space...5 large squares on the wall...space...tiny cookies around a door frame, etc. The whole room was a paragraph of thoughts about relationships that build up over time.




Frankford Journal. Paint on plexiglas. Notice the texture.

Tallman is quiet and intense with a nice sense of humor. His practice involves painting, sculpture and drawing. And the three medias merge and seem of a piece, unified by color and texture and the repeat of circles and squares. All the work I saw had a kind of lumpy, kitchen-art component to it. By that I don't mean it was badly made or artsy-craftsy. The work wears its surface textures -- pocks, brush strokes, drips, scrapes and finger impressions -- proudly.

I asked him about the surface cragginess . "Everything you see is there," he said. "I don't try to wipe it out. I'm in favor of not cleaning things up.

His show at Abington is called "This Time It's Personal." It's not meant as a statement that the work is personal therapy, he said. "It's not personal narrative. It's personal in a way I can't really express," said the English teacher at a loss for words. There are, however, some literally personal touches on the works, like letters and hand-made lines. So it's kind of personal in a universally-coded way (think Jung).

"I'm attracted to minimalism -- casual, hand-made minimalism," he said. I don't put all of my thought in one work. I take five percent of it. Each thing I do I'm trying to break it apart. "




Dusk, paint on sign board mounted outside window and lighted.

In a follow up email recently Tallman said: "I really, really want the viewer to have the experience of being in MY world and I think you picked up on that. I'm very interested in artists and art that has the ability to create that experience. Which is why I've decided to reread Melville's Moby-Dick, page by page. It may not be the hip thing to do but any book with chapters titled..."The Dart," "The Crotch," "Squid," "The Specksynder," "Surmises" and "Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, etc.," ...well you can't go wrong."




Studio doorway and walls encrusted with little jewel-like cookies cast from resin and some with hand-painted lines and dots. Very very sweet.

Tallman's show at Abington is up only another few days. I highly recommend it as a kind of cross-cultural immersion that's whimsical and a little wild. Tallman's adornment of the Abington space (like what I saw in his studio) is both treasure hunt and warm gift. You need to look closely at the walls and interstices to catch it all. What it gives you back for your time spent looking is an appreciation of space and an idea about how rhythm and thought can be communicated non-verbally.

Tallman's a risk taker. This work is not necessarily easy nor will it be everyone's cuppa. But I love the idea behind what he's doing -- and the straight-forward connection he has with his materials. The work is about communicating and about a vision of the world that includes past, present and future; it includes art, the marketplace, the walls and doors of real space.

Foreign and exotic, the work is West by East; Philadelphia by Jeonju, and I look forward to seeing where Tallman takes his vision in the future.

See my flickr set of the studio visit and of the Abington installation.

permanent link   roberta 10:16 AM
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Posted by roberta

In the Weekly's Spring Guide issue is my round-up of shows I'm excited about this Spring. It's not meant to be a comprehensive list, just a smidgen of what's good out there. Here's the link to the story and below is the copy with some pictures.

Planet Rock
Ice sheets, volcanoes, crickets, waterfalls and garden motifs make their way into spring's art offerings.

Artists are always itching to connect with nature, so it's no surprise that this spring you'll see lots of earth, wind, water, animals and plants in the area's art galleries and museums. No antihistamines or sunscreen required, and flip-flops are always welcome.

Climate Control
Abington's Out of the Blue


Felix Gonzalez-Torres icy spill of blue candy putting out the fire in the fireplace at Abington.

Abington Art Center's "Out of the Blue" focuses on climate and environmental concerns, and includes 22 local, national and international artists. Several, like Diane Burko (Philadelphia) and J.J. L'Heureux (Los Angeles), are geo-trekkers, exploring the world by plane and ship to photograph extremes of nature like ice sheets in Antarctica or volcanoes in Iceland.


Joy Espisalla's piece, set on the floor. The fly-over showing clouds and city is very beautiful -- and ominous.

Flirting with issues of nature's beauty and power, these artists make works that transcend National Geographic by imposing a mindset that questions what it sees. The works are in the tradition of sublime landscapes painted by Thomas Cole (Burko) or photographed by Ansel Adams (L'Heureux).


Stephen Andrews' 365 sunsets printed on a kind of un-usable folded blanket. One of the best things in the show. For lots of images from the show, see the Out of the Blue website.

But since in 2006 we understand sublime landscapes no longer exist and global warming is real and threatens us all, the art is grounded not so much in beauty but in worries about the future.


Display case with, among other things, a photo and a story from Eileen Neff. The photo shows a large shadow moving across the continent of Europe. A digitally-enhanced construct significant to Neff for being believable as a satellite photo -- and also as a faux satellite photo (which it is).

If you like behind-the-scenes, "Out of the Blue" has it-an installation of objects, books and artifacts (provided by the artists) that were triggers for their ideas.


John Tallman's installation at Abington. See flickr set for more pix.

Also at Abington in the community gallery is John Tallman's installation of Day-Glo abstract paintings and sculpture which immerse you in an intense unnatural world. Tallman is an emerging local artist and Tyler grad who spent five years teaching English in Korea. He absorbed a lot of that country's urban excitement, and his work broadcasts a techno-industrial ambience that overwhelms all thoughts of land, sea and sky. Serendipity perhaps, but the show is a nice counterpoint to "Out of the Blue."

Out of New Orleans
Gallery 1401


John Woodin New Orleans photo, after the flood or before, I can't tell.

John Woodin's film and digital photographs at Gallery 1401 present New Orleans neighborhoods pre- and posthurricane and flood. Woodin, a New Orleans native, captured the city's unique architectural styles on a 2004 visit. Last October he documented the severe destruction wreaked on many of the same houses, including his mother's home. See more photos at Woodin's inliquid page.

Out of Woodmere
Second Photo Triennial


Thomas Brummett, Fern. For more images see Schmidt-Dean Gallery's website.

Photography lovers eagerly anticipate Woodmere Art Museum's "Second Triennial of Contemporary Photography," a regional roundup that acknowledges Philadelphia's strong and vibrant photography community and dares to pass critical judgment. (Someone somewhere should organize regional triennials for painting, sculpture and video as well-it's overdue.)


Sarah Stolfa's Arpson Bravo. See more Stolfa photos at Gallery 339's website.

Among this year's honored photo practitioners is Thomas Brummett, whose lovely, dark and otherworldly photographs focus on trees, plants and sky. Also honored is emerging artist Sarah Stolfa, not a nature photographer, but one whose nuanced color portraits (taken at McGlinchey's bar, where she works) depict people as hothouse flowers--beautiful and exotic.

Natural Women
PAFA's The Late Show


Nadia Hironaka's Late Show at PAFA. See bigger here.

Nadia Hironaka's "The Late Show" at Pennsylvania Academy's Morris Gallery is a multiprojection video installation that takes you to the drive-in movies with crickets chirping and wind rustling in the trees. Hironaka's technologically savvy piece shows a brightly lit drive-in screen on one wall and a gravel road with a car driving toward you on an adjoining wall. Recorded sounds on various speakers surround you with nature's night sounds to create a believable immersion in the woods. I would've liked a little more story (a woman getting out of a car and lighting a cigarette and a moth flying up on the screen just aren't enough), but the audio is a treat and a pleasant reminder of nature's nighttime lullaby.

Bubble Stages at Painted Bride


Nami Yamamoto's bubble installation at Parts to the Whole at Vox Populi a few months back. See it bigger here.

Nami Yamamoto's bubble installations-which have appeared at Vox Populi, the Philadelphia airport and elsewhere-suggest nature under a microscope. The artist's new installation at the Painted Bride Art Center continues her lacey foam, paper and vinyl evocations of cell division, gurgling hot springs, champagne spills and cascading waterfalls. Made of hundreds of hand-cut bubble forms pinned to walls, floor and ceiling, Yamamoto's pieces hint at the trap of excess, but mostly suggest plenitude and the magic of life.

Woman Photographers at ICA


Candida Hofer photo of an opera house interior which I saw at the Armory show recently. See bigger here.

At the Institute of Contemporary Art human nature is foremost for two female photographers whose concerns with forlorn architectural aesthetics might find surprising kinship. German photographer Candida Höfer focuses on depopulated architectural interiors of public spaces like libraries, opera houses, galleries and cafes.


Zoe Strauss image of a half of a house shows her focus on the architectural forlorn. For more images see her website.

And local artist Zoe Strauss trains her camera on streets and alleyways. While Strauss is known for her people pictures, there's another stream of her work that deals with depopulated scenes in downscale neighborhoods of Philadelphia and elsewhere. Höfer, who studied with renowned German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, is an established international artist. Strauss, who's self-taught, is having her first museum solo. Both artists make works of formal beauty and compositional clarity, and I can't wait to see them under one roof.

Rococo at the Art Alliance


Eva Wylie's piece at her Vox Populi show last year. See bigger here.

Philadelphia Art Alliance's "A Delicate Constitution" provides floral and animal-themed decorative riches, with four artists (Colleen Toledano, Linda Cordell, Carson Fox and Eva Wylie) installing works of rococo excess in various media in the second-floor galleries.


Carson Fox, faux flowers and a double-edged word. At the Art Alliance.

Downstairs and on the third floor Kelley Roberts, Libby Saylor and Julianna Foster add three more distaff voices in separate solo shows. Wylie, a Vox Populi member who screenprints tiny, intricate architectural and garden motifs right on the wall, has been a standout in other group exhibits.

where it's at

"A Delicate Constitution"
Through May 21. Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St. 215.545.4302.

Candida Höfer: "Architecture of Absence" and Zoe Strauss: "Ramp Project"
April 22-July 30. Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St. 215.898.7108.

"The Late Show"
Through May 14. Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118 N. Broad St. 215.972.7600.

Nami Yamamoto: "Stages"
April 7-May 27. Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St. 215.925.9914.

"New Orleans Photographs"
Through April 7. Gallery 1401, University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad St. 215.717.6000.

"Out of the Blue"
Through May 6. Abington Art Center, 515 Meetinghouse Rd., Jenkintown. 215.887.4882.

"Second Woodmere Triennial of Contemporary Photography"
March 26-June 25. Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave. 215.247.0476.

permanent link   roberta 9:42 AM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly is the Spring Guide issue and has my round-up of what's to see this Spring as well as my art page article on Dayton Castleman's "Tilting at Giants" at the Broad Street Ministry. I'll put the Spring Guide piece in another post, coming up in a minute. Here's the link to the art page. And below is the copy with pictures (from Castleman's blog -- my attempt to photograph the piece failed totally!).

Blowing in the Wind
Dayton Castleman's church installation evokes both religious and nonreligious belief systems.


Installation shot in the Broad St. Ministries. As with all installations, it's hard to get a true sense of it in a photograph. Castleman said late afternoon when the windmills catch the sun coming in through the west window is an especially good time to see them.

Five months after artist Dayton Castleman had a vision of 12 windmills floating overhead, their arms turning in a breeze, those windmills-minus the breeze and the spinning arms-are installed in the rafters of the Broad Street Ministry, where they're indeed a vision of improbability.

"Tilting at Giants," as the long-term site-specific commission is called, is a nicely metaphorical addition to a church space already loaded with references to ships, lambs, spirits, wind, fire and belief. Those who understand the references to the Pentecostal wind and the 12 apostles waiting to receive it will read those stories into the piece. Others who know Don Quixote's tilting at windmills (or the sword of Damocles story) will understand the piece in the context of belief systems in general. Either way, it's plenty evocative and open enough to be appreciated by a wide audience.


Detail of the piece.

I talked with Castleman recently. The artist, 30, is a lay minister in the Coalition for Christian Outreach (and no, he says, that's not a right-wing PAC), and a New Orleans native and trained painter who came to Philadelphia in 2001.

He's the first artist commissioned to make a long-term site-specific work for the Broad Street Ministry, an ecumenical church. Funding for the piece came from private donations raised by William Golderer, the church's pastor who, Castleman says, had the brainstorm to get serious contemporary art into the church. (Costs for materials were covered but there was no artist's fee.)


Nice Photoshopped image of the piece that is on the postcard announcement.

While the artist says he panicked initially about the technical aspects of hanging 12 10-foot-tall windmills-each weighing 30 pounds-in the church's rafters, he figured it out with some engineering advice. He installed the decorative windmills (made by Amish manufacturer Dave Wingard) with help from friends and one paid assistant, Andrew Kowal, a former University of the Arts student.

Castleman's first large sculptural installation was in 2005 at Eastern State Penitentiary. "The End of the Tunnel" is 600 feet of red-painted steel pipe that snakes through the cellblocks like a virtual escape route, and is currently on view at the prison.


Another detail shot.

Castleman is the founder of the Church Studios in Fairmount. (See their blog and see Libby's post of her visit to the Church Studios.) Serious about art and about his ministry, he's applying to M.F.A. programs around the country. For a trained painter, he's batting 1.000 as a sculptor, and says he began making sculpture after a personal medical crisis in 2001 and the events of 9/11 caused him to want to make solid objects-something substantial in light of how insubstantial life felt.

Castleman is married to dancer Karen Castleman (they have a 15-month-old daughter) and says he "grew up" in the Presbyterian church. Indeed his talk is peppered with words about sacred space, scripture and spirituality. But his art, both here and at the prison, is engaged with the greater world, and because of that his pieces are successful public art.

"Tilting at Giants: An Installation by Dayton Castleman"
Broad Street Ministry, 320 S. Broad St. 215.917.2251.

permanent link   roberta 7:15 AM
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Posted by roberta

John Tallman
Originally uploaded by sokref1.


Picture is a stack of paintings on plexiglas by John Tallman. The light shines through the plexi and adds yet more otherworldly color to the day-glow piece. Click to see it bigger.

Just a quick note today that I will follow up on later. Abington Art Center's geo-eco-weather-themed show Out of the Blue has a lot of terrific work in it. And in the community gallery, local artist John Tallman's colorful abstract works on plexiglas, canvas and paper and his cookie-like sculptural objects are magical adornment in the beautiful room with the bay window and fireplace. I visited Tallman's studio a while back and will report. Meanwhile if you're out at the Art Center, check out both exhibits.

And here's a link to my flickr set on the shows.

permanent link   roberta 8:32 AM
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Posted by libby

The Late Show video still

In conjunction with The Late Show, Nadia Hironaka's nostalgic video installation at the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she gave a talk last week on some of her past work and the thoughts behind the videos she makes (here's a post from Roberta on Hironaka's installation).

She said she was interested in the roles space and place play together in video.


21 days 70°

She talked about how as a graduate student, she became interested in how, at the invisible point where an edit takes place, an idea is formed. So she created 21 days 70°, to capture on video the moment when an egg hatches; in her mind, capturing that moment represented capturing the moment when an idea happens. Alas, the egg didn't hatch.


Groundskeepers

She talked about making two videos of places that were unpopulated--one a very old place in Italy, where groundskeepers who maintained the manicured gardens were the only people who ever appeared, and the other, the National restaurant supply building in Philadelphia's Old City, where the business was closed but the papers and telephones remained. "It looked like people just left in a hurry," she said. That, plus the 1950s renovation of the 1920s building gave "a sense of narrative through a single arichitectural space."


National

Versions of both those videos--National and "Groundskeepers--she then incorporated into My Stars, a version of which was shown at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. The two videos were shown in star-shaped holes in the wall lined with kaleidoscopic mirrors, and their sound tracks were samplings from science fiction movies (see post).


My Stars mural behind which two videos play, reflected in kaleidoscopic mirrors

Hironaka said she was thinking about how to bring together "inner space, images and sound."

Then she said she "got lost," felt like she was stuck in the present--an an "uncomfortable present," while she was engaged, in the house a lot, looping in circles, and nervous about the future. That point in her life generated two videos--Light Switch Daydream and Home.


"Home"

In Home, she said, she used a VHS camera because old video was like "my own outdated views on women's roles." She used the kind of irritating static lines that appear when pausing old VHS tape as a key element in the video (see post).

She also used squeaking noises that reminded me of film misfed through a projector, static noise, and noir narration samples.

"I liked that visualization of the space between--that uncomfortable time." She also liked the maddening loop of experience rolling by.




In Light Switch Day Dream, Hironaka was inspired by old, yellowed wallpaper in her new home. The video shows the wallpaper pattern on the switch as it goes from pretty to garish. The real-life-size wall switch is activated by a disembodied hand. The video was appropriately enough shown in an apartment show curated by Sean Stoops, displayed where a real switch would be likely to appear on a wall (see post).

A Girl Named Prism was about being stuck in a place where past, present and future are simultaneous. The times were color coded red, green and blue, and Prism is a scientist who must find the ruby, emerald and sapphire gems to create the time machine that will free her from the time warps. When all three are aligned, they are white. "She got it to work, but it's not really answer the questions, and it's experiencing the whole thing and not the final outcome that's so important," said Hironaka, apparently talking as much about herself as the video.



Vanitas

For the Faux Show, Vanitas was a play on the still life genre based on only 15 frames of video. Hironaka set herself the challenge of making something with such little footage. "It's a comment on death," she said, equating motion to life and lack of motion to death. The footage was shot at a house at the shore.

The sound track was from a song about happiness and love.

Hironaka said the The Late Show is about a drive-in movie. "I am more and more intrigued with narrative," i.e. what happens when a narrative from one placeis relocated to a different kind of space, thereby creating a virtual space.
compared what she was doing with sound to the Newsweek photo of Martha Stewart under house arrest, looking free as a bird. Turns out, the image was completely photoshopped. "What happens when an image in the newspaper only exists in virtual space?" she asked.

She was thinking about the woods at night and the Hollywood scream. "Safety is in the light," she said. "What's shown on the screen, in the frame, is safe. Outside the frame, it's scary." So the woods at night are scary, but the viewer is attracted to what's outside the frame (partially because, in Hironaka's drive-in, the screen is just a jittery white rectangle of projected light). She said she was following Hollywood cliches. The meteor in the sky, the girl isolated in a scary space.

But she's removing the narrative. Instead, there's music, smoke, sounds. When the girl leaves the confines of the safe space, "We replace her," said Hironaka. The audience looks around, trying to imagine what will happen next and where." And the audience stays focused on the sound while creating its own narrative.

permanent link   libby 6:24 PM
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Posted by libby

This in from my brother, Barry, who was honeymooning in New York last week:

Of note to the art folk --

The Edvard Munch exibit at Moma was great. As best as I remember my visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo 30+ years ago. the Moma exhibit is a more extensive exhibit of his work.

The David Smith exhibit at the Guggenheim was terrific. I was unaware of the range and quality of the work of America's greatest sculpture.

It is worth the trip up to NY to see either of both.

The last line has more impact if you know that my brother traveled there from Edmonton, Alberta in Canada.

permanent link   libby 8:28 AM
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Posted by roberta

Sol Lewitt and kids
Originally uploaded by sokref1.


Sol Lewitt, Elizabeth Murray and Gerhard Richter at the PMA Contemporary Galleries. Who knew that together they achieve a kind of child's playground atmosphere? Click the image to see bigger.

There's something about what's up now in the PMA's Contemporary Galleries that reminds me of playing the child's game. Like every five year old I loved Candyland for where it took my imagination -- right into those candy mountains and gum drop forests.

None of the artists whose work is on view in this room is particularly child-friendly in what they make (in addition to the Sol Lewitt piece on the floor, there's an Elizabeth Murray split coffee cup on the wall and a Gerhardt Richter paint chip grid. But together the ambiance is totally Candyland.

Catch the little grouping now because the new installation in the contemporary galleries "Notations" opens April 8. (Actually I saw this last week but it may be down already because in order to do the massive re-install called for in Notations they'll have to close the contemporary galleries for a week or more.)

Just a reminder, the new Thomas Hirschhorn acquisition will be in the first round of Notations. More on Notations and a picture of the Hirschhorn piece here.

permanent link   roberta 7:43 AM
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Posted by roberta

BRAD PITT 3
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

I just have to put this out there. My guys are the best spotters of word play ever. Steve noticed it first when they had lunch at a nearby sports bar and the tv was on (no sound). When they came home, Max took a few pictures of it -- the contest between BRAD and PITT. That's Bradley University versus University of Pittsburgh in NCAA basketball action.

Max, who was triple tasking at the time, watching the game, writing dialog for his web comic Fade Resistant and drawing and uploading pictures for said comic, paused his computer to tell me that Bradley won 72-68. Bradley, which we hadn't heard of before, is in the Missouri Valley Conference and located in Peoria, Illinois.

Max's comic, published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, is a post-death scenario involving a repo-man. Right now there's a Superman-like character who just lost his job and is drinking in a bar....I have to recommend it. I'm his mom and I think it's pretty neat.

permanent link   roberta 4:23 PM
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Posted by roberta

rembrandtportrait.jpg
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Rembrandt's Portrait of the Print Dealer Clement de Jonghe, 1651, etching with burin work and drypoint.

First off, campers, we're back online after a hiatus caused by blogger that affected us yesterday and this morning. We're beathing more easily now and hope we didn't cause you to hyperventilate at our absence.

So I'll tell you briefly about the PMA's new acquisitions show which I saw before going through the Perelman building construction site (see Libby's post. Like Libby, I have a bunch of pictures in a flickr set of the hard hat trek we took with Anne d'Harnoncourt, Richard Gluckman, Raymond Perelman and company.)




Astrid Bowlby's Round robins, 2004, etchings

Meanwhile, the new acquisitions: prints and drawings show is a big round-up of purchases and gifts from the last five years. Spanning the ages, there is a lovely etching by Rembrandt (pictured above); and other antique works. I love the Durer prints, especially the beautiful engraving "Coat of Arms with a skull" 1503 (not shown) which seems to speak to today's aesthetic of romantic death and exquisite beauty.

The PMA began collecting art by self-taught and outsider artists in the 1990s and this show has a few great examples by James Castle, Bill Traylor, Joseph Yoakum, Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua, Felipe Jesus Consalvos and Justin McCarthy.

The show's hung in a kind of loose chronological and thematic way which helps ally works as birds of a feather but also gives them a context of their times.




Rob Matthews, After Peale: Family Portrait 2003 #1, graphite on wove paper.

Our town's artists make a strong showing. Facing each other across the space are a fantasy art history drawing by Rob Matthews and a suite of four etchings by Astrid Magdalen Bowlby. Both artists are artblog favorites. Matthews' drawing updates the PMA's painting by Charles Wilson Peale of his sons climbing a stairway looking back over their shoulders. Both works (Peale's and Matthews's are tours de force).

Bracketing Bowlby are a large charcoal drawing by Mei-ling Hom and two small ink and wash drawings by Tom Chimes who will have a solo exhibit at the PMA sometime soon.




Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua, La Bella Huri, 1970. Ballpoint pen and crayon with graphite on cardboard. Self taught artist (1903-1975) who lived in Del Rio, TX.
Since we're name dropping, other local artists featured are Michael Rossman, Warren Rohrer, Michael Olszewski, Tony Rosati and Randy Bolton (now at Cranbrook but to me he's still a homey). Virgil Marti and Sarah McEneaney have their Philadelphia Print Collaborative portfolio prints included.




Mark Bradford (currently in the Whitney Biennial), Untitled #15, 2004. Litho and screenprint monoprint no 15 from an edition of 42 variants. Peter Doig is another current Whitney artist also in this show.

The show affirms the relevance of works on paper as art with visual pleasure and staying power.

And finally, here's a juicy tidbit too good not to pass on. That beautiful Rembrandt etching above? The wall card says it made its way into the collection in 2004, the gift of an "anonymous donor in honor of Smarty Jones." Jones, of course, is the local race horse, now retired, that made some people rich a few years back.

I have much of the show documented in a flickr set. You must excuse the glare and the trapezoidal compositions, all due to me trying to take photos of works primarily under glass.

permanent link   roberta 11:06 AM
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