Monthly Archives: March 2009

Carol Prusa @ Stedman Gallery

carol prusa

Carol Prusa draws the pattern on the surface of the dome then highlights with paint, drills holes and installs fiber optics that change pattern.  So spacy!  Prusa spends hours meticulously drawing the hypnotic patterns.  The passage of time and space is inherent to the work on view @ Stedman Gallery on the Rutgers Campus in Camden.

Lauren Sweeney & Eric Fausnacht @ TwentyTwo Gallery

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Eric Fauscnacht paints chickens – large scale paintings with exotic fowls portrayed against decorative backdrops.  His painterly style is decorative and accessable yet strange and magestic, portraying the humble creatures with style, wit and precision.  Shawn Murray‘s gallery is a perfectly beautiful space which features member artists with one or two person shows in the main room and a terrific group of paintings by the other coalition members in the back space.  Libby Rosoff commented on how many animal paintings she has been seeing in various shows.  DoN has noticed a lot of deer in recent shows; the animal image is primal and deep and must be plucking that nerve string in the group consciousness like a viral meme. 

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Eric Fausnacht @ TwentyTwo Gallery.

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TwentyTwo Gallery in Center City, Philly. 

lauren Sweeney & Eric Fausnacht @ TwentyTwo Gallery 

 Lauren Sweeney‘s delicate watercolors paired with Fauscnacht‘s elaborate chicken paintings is fantastical, inspiring and strange, the show makes DoN want to get back into the studio and paint.

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TwentyTwo Gallery member artist, Reta Sweeney in the on-going group exhibit @ 236 South 22nd Street.

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TwentyTwo Gallery member artist, Edwin Bronstein in the on-going group exhibit @ 236 South 22nd Street. 

 

Lenticular Prints @ Rutgers’ Stedman Gallery

lenticular Prints @ Rutgers’ Stedman Gallery

Mary Ann Strandell @ Stedman Gallery.  The large scale 3D lenticular print, “Loving Monkey“, 2008, is just fabulous.  Pop and nostalgia blended with painterly and studied drawing is like a psychedelic flash forward – imagine these panels really big and everywhere, the images are never quite repeated drawing the viewer into layers of design, signifiers and simulacra.

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Mary Ann Standell, “The Meme Tree“, sumi and gouache drawing with 3D lenticular prints Tiki Town Red, Wander, Making Water, Monkey Orb.  DoN LoVeS MeMeS!!!

Art Cakes

 Mmmm…cake. 

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Justin Duerr‘s self-decorated opening night party cake @ St. Asaph’s Gallery in Bala.

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The students of the Rutger’s fine arts department made this cake for the opening reception of “To Be or Not To Be ; The Painter’s Dilemma“, an excellent symposium on contemporary painting held on the Rutger’s Camden campus. 

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 David Foss‘ B’Day cupcakes at 333 South Street Gallery.

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DoN‘s niece, Candice’s nursing school graduation cake.

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This cake has reiki on it! 

To Be or Not To Be @ Rutgers Fine Art, Camden, NJ

The future of painting and image-making was the core of two day symposium at Rutgers University Fine Arts. With introductions to more than a dozen amazing painters, fantastically futuristic images, meme trees, 3D linticular prints and vast amounts of computer-based presentations in four information packed presentations.   DoN likes to go someplace cool for his birthday like NYC but Bruce Garrity one of the coordinators reached out to DoN about the symposium; it turns out Camden is pretty damn cool.  Libby Rosoff of artblog (OMFG!! – a blog legend) was the moderator for Friday’s panel, “Painting,  So What?“, Libby & DoN had only met through Facebook and now we actually know each other in real life.  Rosoff lead a strong discussion of the relevance of painting and what constitutes painting in the world today and really kept the discussion and presentations on target.  Each artist did a video presentation and talk about their art and then Libby moderated questions from the audience with the panel offering thoughtful opinions on what constitute art today.  

The symposium was organized by Margery Amdur and Bruce Garrity who authoritatively and wisely organized panel discussions about art and the relevance of image-making in the post-modern age.  The art on view in The Stedman Gallery is post-post modern contemporary with a futurist beam of thought-bubbles enveloping the diverse media on view in the galleries.  The future is here and it’s about “experience design”, from Camden to Outer Space and back, the dual show at Stedman Gallery and Hopkins House is a retrofitted future fantasy.

Amy Kauffman    

 Amy S. Kauffman – a UArts Alum, Holla Back, Girl! – makes her mark by folding tootsie roll, gum and candy wrappers in endless numbers of little paper boats or paper chains such as this enormous coil @ Hopkins House Gallery.  

Pam Longobardi mixes objects that have drifted loose from the giant plastic pollution blob floating in the middle of the oceans with images of plastic bits that have been deformed and reshaped by the ocean and cast up on the beach – check out driftwebs.com .  Pam’s story of how she discovered these objects is totally engrossing, as are her paintings such as “Surge” a painting full of the tension of tidal waves and fragile power grids.

Pam Longobardi 

DoN collected so much information to share about the other panelists including Carol Prusa‘s entrancing dome drawings with fiber optic lights, Liz Brown‘s dioramas of mismatched dumb stuff and Steve Pauley‘s gravestone-like carvings of vending machines, anthrax letters and homeland security advisory guides…deep.