Monthly Archives: April 2009

Peace

peace

Peace sign made from shredded money @ Art x 7 @ 6th & South Streets, the exhibit is elegant and edgy with strange points of view and exaggerated reality. The gallery is part of the new South Street Renaissance, superb photos by Susan Arthur Whitson and Keith Sharp.

peace

Kathryn Pannepacker @ The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers in Outsiders Folk Art. This piece includes woven paper matches, the kind you light cigs with; Pannepacker knows how to ignite a conversation, her peace/heart is ready to burst into flames.
peace

Photo by DoN.

The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers @ Outsider Folk Arts in the Goggle Works.

The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers have overtaken Outsiders Folk Arts in the Goggleworks Center for the Arts, a major cultural hub of the Reading region. DoN saw families tumbling out the door after some sort of recital, there’s an art show of students who have taken classes in the center, there’s an enourmous wood shop that smells so good. The Goggleworks is a magnet for artists of all stripes finding access to a wide array of opportunities and is really cool space itself, packed with studios, galleries, show spaces and art. The Dumpster Divers are definitely grooving on the vibe of the place and have installed unique, quirky objects which will inspire many budding artists as well as attracting collectors, since Viener’s artistic eye is well respected.

George Viener is a collector of folk art, outsider art and self-taught art; even though the many of the Divers are professional artists in their own right, collectively the group has a simple basic principle of being creative with what’s on hand, art doesn’t have to be expensive to make and rescueing lost objects ala Marcel DuChamp is de riguer. DoN thinks that counts as self-taught, it’s new, unfiltered raw ideas bubbling to the surface; Dada.
outsider arts

Len Davidson, Queen of the Gnomes, @ Outsider Folk Arts in Reading, PA.

 

outsider arts

Randal Cleaver, Space Time @ Outsider Folk Arts.

 

outsider arts

Warren Muller, Philadelphia light artist @ Outsider Folk Arts in the Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading.

Murals – Philadelphia has Walls.

Keith Haring

Keith Haring mural on 21st Street near Washington Ave. Haring came to Philly and worked with the city kids to produce this enduring homage to childhood.

mural

Artist working on the new mural on Spruce near Juniper. DoN will research who the muralist is but the level of design, execution and location provides a feeling of good will and community. There’s a huge new mural at 25th and Oregon that wraps around the Shoprite building with a theme of abundance and living off the land.

Burnell Yow! – Dolls of the Apocalypse @ Outsider Folk Art

In Philip Dick’s dystopian future sci-fi classic, Dr. Bloodmoney, Happy Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers trundles around in a wagon pulled by a donkey and gleans from the post-nuclear highway with his robotic prothetic “arms”. Yow! takes DoN to that future place when transmogrified beings wander Earth looking for charms, spells and spare mother-boards. Tapping into the zeitgeist that trash is future treasure, these dolls represent the Apocalypse that has already happened all around DoN is slo-mo without him really noticing. Dolls of the Apolalypse incorporate actual Barbie Doll body parts – using a terrific technique, Yow! tricks the eye into believing the work is cast metal. Plastic is the new Apocalypse.

 

burnell yow! doll

 

Burnell Yow!, Dolls of the Apocalypse in The Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Show @ Outsider Folk Arts in Reading, PA.

outsider arts

Dumpster Divers 17yo

The Dumpster Diver Gallery @ 734 South Street held a gala in honor of their 17th anniversary as an anarchist art collective dedicated to making art from cultural refuse. Like the gleaners in a Millet painting, this disparate group sifts through the remnants of contemporary culture creating junque, elegant objects, witty pronouncements, versatile visions as if gathering potatoes in a French field.  Ellen Benson‘s mixed media constructions from old books and Lincoln Logs throb with vague dreams of lives past; each anthropomorphic object has a funky little personality all it’s own, Benson is on a mission to create 1000 dolls, she’s approaching 500.  

Randy Dalton has recreated the Blue Grotto in the back of the sprawling space;  DoN LoVeS seeing funky old computers like the Mac blue-and-white monitor being used as an art object like some retrofitted Neuromancer future style.  DoN‘s blue-n-white glowed purple and made a zapping sound early in the morning a while back but it’s still in the basement, too beautiful to throw away.  Neil Benson‘s lamp made of stacked tin boxes is a museum piece; each box filled with memetic waves forms depending on the pattern printed on the thin folded metal.   The Dumpster Divers on South Street is like William Gibson‘s future city built on the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge after the grid goes down and a whole society develops meeting every need from noodle soup to watch repair.  

Artists are taking the city over from City Hall to South Street, Kensington to University City, Rittenhouse Square to Pretzel Park; art is more than just on the surface, it’s being built in. 

 ellen benson

Ellen Benson with her dolls @ Dumpster Divers on South Street.

randy dalton

Randy Dalton’s Blue Grotto @ Dumpster Divers.