Monthly Archives: September 2012

Violent Silence

As DoN listens to DJ PolishedSolids weekly internet radio broadcast on Mixlr.com, the adrenaline from the past few days is dispersing with the music. The set this week is called Violent Silence, a genre hopping music mix with violence as this week’s theme. Maybe it’s the full moon but some folks are acting crazy as a Zombie Apocalypse out there.

As you might imagine, DoN‘s e-mail inbox is maxed out – over 10,000 un-read messages! With house-keeping in mind, DoN un-subscribed to dozens of newsletters and deleted hundreds of messages without malice of intent. All of the newsletters thanked me for my patronage – except one. DoN opened an e-mail thinking it would be another “are you sure?” message and instead it said, “Since you are being such an ass about things please unsubscribe “name withheld” form you banal reviews.” Note the typos.

DoNArTNeWs had reviewed this artist’s work about a dozen times over the years; all posts mentioning the artist have been deleted from this blog. To be clear, DoN receives no compensation for writing this blog. In fact, it costs money to maintain this site, travel to events and post blog stories. Even though the site has advertising through Amazon and CJ.com, the niche market DoN writes about does not produce any income. DoN writes for his own enjoyment, intellectual development and support for the Philadelphia art community he loves.

If you are using social media to promote your art, take it from DoN, insulting your promoters will not bring you more business or happiness. DoNArTNeWs will continue to post reviews about art in the most positive light possible, focussing on emerging artists, small galleries and studios. If a story about you doesn’t get posted, it’s not that DoN doesn’t like you or your work, only that time has run out since DoN is an army of one. Except for the wonderful Jeff Stroud who shares his photography with us with grace and gratitude.

In the coming days DoN will be posting stories about Michelle Post‘s Tronies show at Da Vinci Art Alliance, More Photographs About Buildings and Food at Gallery 339Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery, the fabulous show of drawings at The Philadelphia Sketch Club curated by Bill Scott and Alex Kanevsky and more, more more…this is the 496th blog post on DoNArTNeWs. Thanks DJ PolishedSolid for the inspiration.

LoVe

DoN

DoN Brewer

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensenphoto by Jeff Stroud

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen, photo by Jeff Stroud

Did you ever want to print one of your photos big, really big, like 64″ wide and almost as long as you want? Silicon Fine Art Prints has six Epson wide format printers at their disposal to make your dreams come true, plus they will help you realize your passion with expert advise. That’s why many of Philadelphia’s finest fine art photographers trek to Old City to have their prints made. And for the month of September studio:christensen, on 20th Streetis displaying a collection of incredibly imaginative images produced in the Silicon Fine Art Prints workshop.

studio:christensen is a unique gallery/design space/pop-up shop featuring art, furniture, fashion and photography for the discerning urban dweller. Just walking by the storefront is inspiring, going inside to meet the friendly owner Jt Christensen and his (may DoN say) glamorous assistant Joanna Babarakos is to step into a world of approachable yet unusual design and art.

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensenJoel Lederer

When one enters the gallery, the modern art mixed with beautiful furnishings is satisfyingly uplifting. But Joel Lederer‘s bold pair of enormous prints draws you towards them like a magnet. DoN asked Joel Lederer about the luminous prints, “The images are from a game called Second Life, it’s an on-line 3D virtual world, a massive multi-user on-line role playing game. What this project is, is essentially landscape photography, straight landscape photography, inside that virtual world. And it’s like a survey of essentially different styles that are used to create that community. What’s unique about it is that whereas other games have sort of a set narrative, and a set aesthetic, Second Life’s content is built by the users. You can go in there and rent virtual land and decorate it however you want and bring your own content and textures. I thought that was kind of interesting, so my goal was to bring as many different types of styles of landscape photography within that world.”

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Joel Lederer continues, “In the beginning I was like how do I take a survey view? A documentary view? I figured since the virtual world is built from styles of the real world, I’d have to emulate the individual styles.” DoN asked if it’s a screen shot? “It’s a little more difficult than that, but it’s like a high resolution screen shot.”

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Joel Lederers work is also on display at SITE Santa Fe, in a show called More Real. “A whole show about truthiness and virtuality.”

More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness presents work by some of today’s most accomplished and promising international artists who are examining our shifting experience of reality. Over the past century, during a period of unprecedented technological change and global social upheaval, once-established beliefs, or “truths,” have been cast into doubt, changing and shaping our understanding and experience of reality. Through diverse media and in unexpected ways, this exhibition explores the impact and role of deception, play, memory, power, simulation, and new technologies on art and everyday life.”  SITE Santa Fe website.  

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer except where noted, thanks to photographer, Jeff Stroud

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Derek Jecxz, Forsaken Waters, Twenty-Two Gallery

Derek Jecxz, Forsaken Waters, Twenty-Two Gallery

Derek Jecxz, Forsaken WatersTwenty-Two Gallery

Derek JecxzForsaken WatersTwenty-Two Gallery is a collection of photographs of desolate scenes of water, eerily beautiful and mysterious landscapes far from civilization. The exhibition is a combination of photographs printed on paper and aluminum, DoN spoke with the artist at the opening about the process to print on metal. Derek Jecxz explained, “About sixteen or seventeen of them are on aluminum and they were very difficult to do. There is probably between five and ten hours work in each one. Cleaning the aluminum, getting the chemicals off of it, sanding the aluminum multiple times and then prepping it again and then coating it with a chemical so that I could then get it through and printed on.”

Derek Jecxz, Forsaken Waters, Twenty-Two Gallery

Derek JecxzForsaken WatersTwenty-Two Gallery

“And then it has to dry for five days, then I have to varnish it, and then I have to trim it off the big metal sheet.”

“Wow!” said DoN. “I know!.” said Derek, “I think I bit off more than I could chew. And then you have to try and keep it flat. I’m using an Epson 9800, but I’m not running the metal directly through, I attach it to a carrier sheet, I didn’t have the confidence of running the metal right through. So I tape it to a big sheet of paper and run that paper through, this way I’m not going to ruin the printer on the edges. That was my main fear.”

Derek Jecxz, Forsaken Waters, Twenty-Two Gallery

Derek JecxzForsaken WatersTwenty-Two Gallery

DoN asked if it’s such a laborious process how did Jecxz decide which images to use? “Well, I knew the subject of the show was going to be water because that was my predominant theme. When I did a series of tests I noticed that if a picture had a light element in it, it allowed the luminescence of the aluminum to shine through, so that was an easy decision for me. The process was difficult because of a lot of false starts, I tried stainless steel, I tried different sanding techniques – a lot of false starts.

DoN wondered why the photographer didn’t use a commercial producer? “I did find two vendors, one vendor sells aluminum sheets with a max width of twenty inches, I can’t use that with medium format photography for big prints twenty inches doesn’t work. Another company sells very, very shiny aluminum and it’s not what I liked.”

Derek Jecxz, Forsaken Waters, Twenty-Two Gallery

Derek JecxzForsaken WatersTwenty-Two Gallery

Distinguishing between the aluminum and paper prints is difficult, which is which?  Derek Jecxz explained, “Anything with plexi is paper anything that has no cover is aluminum. You can see my hand from sanding it, everything is personal, I stamp each one and everything is unique. So this starts out as a three by three foot sheet, I hand sand it for about five hours multiple times and then the process goes from there. The smaller ones were easier than the larger ones but you can see where the white really came through.”

Derek Jecxz shoots with Hasselblad , some film, some digital but most of the photographs are digital. DoN commented that whenever he takes his camera to the beach it doesn’t work so well because of the humidity. Derek said, “I was standing in the water, probably knee deep or higher, with the waves crashing in. I will risk the gear to take the shot, the gear is irrelevant. You’re there to make a picture not protect your gear.”

The illusion of whiteness in Derek Jecxz‘s photographs is uncanny, the somewhat matte finish to the metal shows through where white in the picture is because printers don’t print white ink. The presentation is exquisite with the photographs mounted in hand-made frames, the room filled with images of distant places and primordial seascapes. Twenty-Two Gallery is located on 22nd Street and has twenty-two member artists, the solo show in the front gallery visible from the street and an intimate gallery with works by the twenty-one other member artists.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

Renny Molenaar‘s solo show at House Gallery is mind-blowing, DoN asked the artist about the installation, “I’m a compulsive collector. All of the pieces in the show are inspired by repetition of color. I was playing with the Puerto Rican artist Miguel Pinero, the book Short Eyes, the first Puerto Rican play on Broadway, a movie came out after that. He was one of the writers for Miami Vice. He has a line where he’s talking about junkies that mentioned different kinds of rainbows in different color schemes. And I love that line, it’s fascinating. Brown rainbows and gray rainbows and vertical rainbows. And then I started doing rainbows with crack vials.”

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny MolenaarStacks Piles Accumulations Collections

“I was living in the South Bronx and I had just read Langston Hughes, where he’s talking about heroin pussy, this is crack pussy, and I was doing rainbows with them and I started noticing garbage becomes a narrative, garbage becomes a story. So I started collecting garbage that attracted me, that told a story…I became very attracted to things that have color. Or I added color, so I did a show in Maine and I did an installation of rocks covered in fabric, just to experiment, it was funny. I came back to New York, and I was invited to do a show ‘at a gallery’ and I wanted more rocks.”

“So I’m in the South Bronx and I tried to look for rocks and there is no rocks in the South Bronx. So, I found crack vials, I found mufflers, the mufflers are on top of the piano. This is terrible. That’s where the mufflers come up…they’re more common in the street than rocks. So I covered them in different colored fabric.”

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny MolenaarStacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny MolenaarStacks Piles Accumulations Collections

Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections is disturbing and amazing with works made from crack lighters, crack bags and vials, found objects and fabric-bombed car mufflers leaving the question of the complicity of the petro-chemical industry in the distribution of drugs in the city all in a sweet rainbow of seductive color.

House Gallery, 1816 Frankfort Ave., Philadelphia PA.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Lilliana Didovic, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Lilliana Didovic, Kater StreetCollage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club is 121 unique works of art using every sort of media imaginable from traditional magazine rip-outs to Swarovsky crystals. The tradition of the art gallery is to hang every entry, this show was open to non-members, and then awards are selected from the entire show. This policy offers new artists a place to show along side more established ones but usually the quality is high, prize winners can be first time artists or art veterans. The collage show is fun and quirky, with Dada-esque ready-mades and Dali-inian surrealism, sculptures and photo-montages, micro to macro, the ground is evenly covered with eye catching extravagance.

Lindsey Dickson, Earth Angel, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Lindsey Dickson, Earth AngelCollage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Alan J. Klawans, Bill Myers, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Alan J. Klawans, One, Two, Three, Bill Myers, Love Junk Taxi ParkCollage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Regina Barthmaier, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Regina Barthmaier, UntitledCollage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan, Brooklyn Room, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan, Brooklyn RoomCollage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan won First Prize for her collage of photos taken while living with friends in Brooklyn, thus the title. The artist explained to DoN that the artwork uses traditional collage techniques but is atmospheric and loaded with narrative of her time in NYC.

Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club is on exhibit through September 22nd, 2012.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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