Seven Dishsoaps, Peter Seidel @ Da Vinci Art Alliance, 7th & Catharine Streets in South Philly. Peter Seidel won the Da Vinci Art Alliance Gold Medal for his superb painting.
DoN Brewer, Heptagon, photoshop. DoN was honored to be on the jury committee to select the medal winners, which also freed him to produce whatever he wanted for the show. Seven will be shown at The Noyes Museum annex in Hammonton, NJ this Fall.
Lois Allen Charles, Seven Waterlillies and Lilliana Didovic, Seven Elephants @ Seven, the current member exhibition at Da Vinci Art Alliance has a wide interpretation of the symbolism of the number seven, yet the discussion around the sign went on long after the show was installed. The DVAA exhibitions committee really tapped into a concept the members could grok.
Anna Vosburgh, Hope 1 @ Da Vinci Art Alliance - Anna is not only a great painter, she’s a blogger!
Alden Cole completed his series of self portraits portraying the Seven Deadly Sins, the first three sins are included in a painting Cole produced for DVAA’s Henry IV, Part 1 @ The Lantern Theater Company’s Black Box Gallery. These two panels, though, are more explosively emotional, brashly colorful and deeply introspective; Alden acts for the camera then paints the facial expressions with light, color fields and texture as if he’s looking deep into your being, reflecting back the many faces of sin.
Rosalind Bloom’s model’s dummy poses in pain and peril a top a slippery slope of rock and ice. Bloom mixes metaphors and media creating deeply intimate portraits of human emotion as if the dummies are trying to find their place in a confusing world.
Sharri Jerue, Indecision, mixed media @ Smile Gallery.
Sharri Jerue is a scenic designer who usually has to realize other people’s ideas but in the Faces and Figures show @ Smile, Sharri is able to mix and mash her ideas into anthropomorphic heads, using found materials with abandon. The inspired combination of wacky heads and puppets in peril is the brainchild of Dr. Deb Miller who saw the neural network between simple shapes and ideas and racial memory based deeply in our brain stems stimulated by paintings and sculpture.
Curator Dr. Deb Miller, artists Rosalind Bloom and Sharri Jerue at the opening of Faces and Figures @ Smile Gallery in Center City.
Carol Wisker with her award winning mixed media creation, Machine: War Games Series, when the show first opened at Smile Gallery, Carol won Best in Show. The huge gallery space at RRCA is a wonderful opportunity to see most of the original show hanging together again. 3rd Friday in Millville was really fun with live entertainment tucked into every park, alley and plaza including a glee club performance!!! The creative vibe of the monthly event with art shows, restaurants and shops welcome visitors warmly with small town ambiance and upscale art.
Ted Warchal @ Riverfront Renaissance Center for the Arts special exhibit, Through My Window, A Da Vinci Art Alliance Members Exhibit. Ted, Ona & DoN are members of the Board of Directors of Da Vinci, thanks to all the artists & volunteers who arranged for the art to show up on time and to Dr. Debra Miller & David Foss for the expert installation, the RRCA is a wonderful exhibition space.
David Foss & Nicole Koenitzer.
Betsy Alexander’s Sci-Fi homage drew some teenage geeks into the gallery who seemed mesmerized at the depth of knowledge in the obscure references. Burnell Yow! told DoN he was hesitant when Betsy voiced her encyclopedic idea - but beam me up!
DoN Brewer’s drawing of Paris rooftops is paired perfectly with Lilliana Didovic’s Boathouse Row painting.
The concept pf Through My Window is that more than 20 artists were offered a window to do whatever they wanted with, the result is a uniquely Philadelphian art perspective: Bobbie Adams, Betsy Alexander, Jesse Best, DoN Brewer, Rachel Citrino. Alden Cole. Lilliana Didovic, Jerry di Falco, David Foss, Carl Johnson, Ona Kalstein, Nicole Koenitzer, Gail Kotel, Rikard Larma, Lee Muslin, Liz Nicklus, Kathryn Pannepacker, Michael Shane Simmons, Mike Sweeney, Ted Warchal, Carol Wisker & Burnell Yow!
Our annual members show in July is on the theme of Seven; there is no entry fee for submissions, all work will be included, per rules on attached prospectus. The exhibition will travel to The Noyes Museum of Art in October!
CALENDAR FOR JULY MEMBERS SHOW:
Delivery of labeled art work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 27, 2010, 5-7 pm & July 7, 6-8pm
Installation of show. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 8, beginning at 11 am
Opening Reception and Awards Presentation . . . . . . . . . July 10, 6-9pm
Pick-up of unsold art work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 25, 4-6 pm & July 26, 5-7 pm
*The PPT lecture on “Depictions of the 7 Deadly Sins in Northern European Art of the 15th-17th Centuries” will be presented by Da Vinci President Deb Miller, supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council.
All events are free and open to the public. Please plan to attend, and to invite guests!
Michael DiPrinzio encourages his son, Dean, age 5, to grab some art supplies and work with his Dad in the studio while he creates his abstract expressionist /naive primitivist paintings. Unlike the Philly Dad who let’s his kid swig beer at a ball game, DiPrinzio is familiarizing Dean with the arts and culture of all kinds - Dean was a cool art star at the opening, drawing and posing for pictures. DiPrinzio the Younger’s work was hung on clothes pins scattered around the gallery among DiPrinzio the Elder’s paintings. Seeing familiar household objects and surfaces incorporated into DiPrinzio’s dream-scapes plucks on childhood nerves like time traveling back to a younger day when a clothes-pin was the coolest thing ever.
Michael DiPrinzio, Give Thanks, A Heart Felt Toast @ Da Vinci Art Gallery in South Philly.
Michael DiPrinzio, Year of the Rat @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.
Dinosaur by Dean DiPrinzio, crayon on ceiling tile. Having a kid’s art perspective bouncing off the adult abstractions creates a vibration between childish mark-making and child-like abandon.
With Dali-esque coloration, Michael DiPrinzio gets down & dirty with this large scale mixed media painting, the paint battles across the canvas, mixing like a wacko fractal model.
Untitled, Michael DiPrinzio @ Da Vinci Art Alliance @ 7th & Catharine Streets. The gallery is a hidden gem in South Philly, offering artists the opportunity to have one-person or group shows along with themed members only exhibits throughout the year. Just a few blocks from The Italian Market, Da Vinci Art Alliance offers contemporary art in a lovely town-house gallery across the street from Fleisher Art Memorial.
Valerie Carroll’s animistic portraits of cats & dogs practically growl with aggression, daring DoN to stare down scary faces like monsters in a dream. Sometimes when DoN looks into KaTy the ArT DoGs eyes he feels a connection with her like some extrasensory perception mind meld is happening, Carroll’s paintings tap into that same vibe. Carroll’s animal portraits are classic mise en scene animal portraits yet brutalist and difficult like a great punk rock song.
Valerie Carroll, Rub-a-Dub, A Man in a Tub, oil on canvas.
Valerie Carroll explained how she first got this impression of the bathing man while out West but finished the painting back East. The painting pulses with emotion, the man’s facial expression roils with desperation, the luxury of a bath too sad to believe, a beard grown wild, a rusted basin a momentary respite from the New Great Depression.
Valerie Carroll, Man in a Pink Shirt, oil on canvas. Light & Despair @ Twenty-Two Gallery.
Shawn Murray, Twenty-Two Gallery’s mastermind, warned Adrienne Jenkins that portraits are a hard sell but her paintings of twenty-somethings reveal such a current state of being for young people - harried, a bit grim, self absorbed like characters from a William Faulkner novel set in the future - that it makes DoN glad she ignored his advice, the portraits are so painterly they don’t read as so specific.
Twenty-Two Gallery’s co-curator , Diane Podolsky, has the balls to mix up impressionist still life paintings with stylized portraits and crazed pet paintings & makes it work like some museum show of the history of modern art; paintings just never go out of style.
Valerie Carroll & Adrienne Jenkins at the opening of their show, Light and Despair @ Twenty-Two Gallery during West Center City’s Second Friday art crawl. The two artists paint together at Wayne Art Center , sharing studio space and creating a kind of cross-pollination of painting styles. With 25 or so paintings, this is a big show for two artists but Adrienne Jenkins is preparing for her solo show next year for the same space; the two artists have joined the artist collective and you can meet them this Sunday afternoon at Twenty-Two Gallery, 236 South 22nd Street.
Karl Richard Olsen took home the Gold Medal in the Plastic Club’s Members’ Medals Show for “Norge“, graphite & pastel. Check out the perfect hoop earring, a simple shape created with confidant strokes, anchoring the image in a time, place, personality, style… it’s amazing how charcoal & pastel can look so liquidy & fluid. Olsen has a major installation for MCGOPA @ The Inquirer Building in Conshohocken.
Robert Bohne won the Dorothy Invernizzi Guinn Memorial Prize for his masterpiece, “Crustacean Feast“. The award honors realist paintings because Dorothy didn’t get abstract art and this oil painting is a timeless example of atmospheric naturalism of the highest achievement. As an artist, when viewing a painting which speaks of years of observation, practice, study, patience & wisdom, it leaves a sensation of living forever, feasting in the moment and leaving a mark on the world.
Burton Greenspan, Albert, oil. Honorable Mention Award for The Plastic Club’s Members’ Medals Show.
The Members’ Medals Show presents 130 artworks throughout three gallery spaces, Alan Klawans explained that volunteers organize and hang the show; the organic mix of paintings, drawings, photos & mixed media often is brilliant with quirky juxtapositions, DoN is confused by the placement of Syd Torchio’s Art Porn, Take 3, a fantastical painting with a grown up fun-house vibe that gets a bit lost in the dim hall, the best view is from the stairs.
While Alan Klawans, the Exhibitions Chair of The Plastic Club, awarded honors for the excellent Black & White show, DoN observed sunlight creeping across Vetiado # 48, a mixed media painting by Louisa Velben. The painting glittered as if diamonds are embedded in the surface but the illusion was shiny paint bubbles in the thickly painted and swirled liquid.
Pulled From The Darkness, Erik Melendez, charcoal.
Karl Richard Olsen, Portrait, graphite. Bill Meyers, of PSoP, volunteer posed at the Plastic Club, the likeness is striking yet loose and free.
Rebecca Miller, Overrripe: Compost 3, graphite. Miller is completing the Master program @ PAFA, studying with the extraordinary Scott Noel; this piece was created by drawing on gessoed board, draw with graphite, layer watered gesso over the drawing, let dry, draw some more…the result is an award winning drawing. Miller also took home a prize the same day from The Philadelphia Sketch Club for an oil painting. Seeing young new talent emerging from local art schools with the skill of masters participating in the grass roots arts movement in Philly is extremely satisfying.
Alden Cole, Dancing in the Dark, pencil and Leroy Fornoy,Night Bus, oil. Pairing these two graphic pieces is genius - Cole’s trippy Starlings dance ecstatically and Fornoy’s painting has a Manga skate-punk nihilist vibe.
One of the great aspects of this show is the variety of media displayed, now that photography is accepted in the art circles as a legitimate art form, many Photographic Society of Philadelphia members have the opportunity to show with their work along side traditional media - some photographers even entered paintings!
Arthur Ostroff, Floreal Ancienne, ink jet print.
Riikka Salo, Windows to Spruce, photograph.
Lois Schlachter, Exhibitions Chair of The Philadelphia Sketch Club, and Alan Klawans, Exhibitions Chair of The Plastic Club, at the Black & White Show. The Philadelphia Sketch Club opened their 147th Annual Exhibitions of Small Oil Paintings the same afternoon - between the two art clubs there are over 300 new art works by contemporary Philadelphia area artists to see. The juxtaposition of two strong theme shows is visually and psychologically invigorating, one show is limited to size and medium, the other limited to no color, the problem-solving and creativity of the artists is inspiring, entertaining and lucid.
James Dean Erickson, Portrait of Douglass Carr, oil on board. The model in cap & hoddie can be found wheel-chair bound outside St. John’s, a diabetic, a friend recommended the artist invite him into the studio to pose at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. James relayed to DoN, “Portraiture can be a vehicle for therapy, highlights the dignity of the individual, and be a channel for excitement and energy.”
Rachel Constantine, Fifteen, oil. The title says it all.
Richard Coach,The Fish of Delos.
Like time traveling to a lost and ancient city, this painting could be anywhere in time and space. Seething with hunger for life, referencing work, culture, taste, serving up skills acquired with trial & error, the exquisite painting and substantial frame is right here in Philly in America’s oldest art club, the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
Kyle Margiotta, Blow, oil. This would be a great picture for a house with kids, imagine how this masterful painting would elevate the taste of growing minds, simple mark-making telling long stories playing out like fairytales, set in the real world, incredulous expressions speaking volumes.
Mark Brough Goodson, Tom Csaszar/Eye of the Critic and Neysa Grassi/Eye of the Critic.
The pair of pairs of eyes, attractive and expressive, are superb examples of how small paintings capture moments in time, filled with emotions, thought and empathy in a medium which will last for centuries. Hundreds of years from now the oil paintings being produced now will still transmit stories from our time, the present, to the future, their past.
DoN overheard a man say, “Why don’t they say where these places are?” DoN pointed out the title does name a place, “Snow Melt, Sand Island“, by Sandra Corpora, it just doesn’t give GPS coordinates. The man asked DoN what he liked about the painting? “The restraint of using the one thick pure white stroke of paint to represent the most distant point in the painting.” He looked hard @ DoN & disappeared into the crowd.
147th Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings is through April 24th with 170 of the best oil paintings in the city hanging together, continuing a long history of excellence in contemporary oil painting.
Ona Kalstein by her three entries in the Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1 in the Black Box Gallery @ St. Stevens Theater @ 10th & Ludlow Sts, Lantern Theater Company. Ona designed images signified with memes, language and typography in a trio of drawings; child-like blood drops spurt from the cracked crown, a “garment made of blood” is saturated with droplets while the King wails and blood soaks the pea fields of the Battle of Shrewsbury with red tear-drops, the simple shapes communicating on multiple levels. Ona designs hippy-style typography into the image as if they are pages in a coloring book for kids with sophisticated adult language.
June Blumberg’s exuberant composition of the hard partying gang hanging around Prince Hal are a buffoonish bunch of clowns - thuggish, scary clowns with swords and big smiles. Blumberg won an honorable mention for her painting from the jury committee…the naive primitivism & quirky composition is fun but not jokey.
Alden Cole attended Lantern Theater Company’s Art Director, Charles McMann’s, lecture @ Da Vinci Art Alliance in late February since the play had everyone scratching their heads, Henry IV, Part 1 is not one of Shakespeare’s better known plays, and the lecture sent Cole into an exploration of the Seven Deadly Sins and how they relate to the characters in the play - Hal is slovenly, Falstaff is corpulent and Hotspur is haughty - all based on self-portraits. To develop the composition Alden acts out the facial expressions, photographs himself, composes the scene in Photoshop then paints in oils on an enormous canvas. Acedia Luxuria Superbia.
Lilliana Didovic, Lilliana Didovic & David Foss @ Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1. Didovic painted abstract weapons and Foss layered and destroyed paint to visualize wounded flesh, the metaphors and significations are not forced but real. The exhibition is loosely divided between “abstract” and “representational” art, like a battle of the art styles, David’s painting is visceral and scarred like a mutilated warrior and Lilliana’s gentle coloration is a contradiction in terms - beautiful weapons.
Mina Smith-Segal with her award winning painting, the brutalist watercolor truly captures the tension & fear of battle.
Hal by DoN, oil on canvas. Photo by Morris Klein. DoN Brewer used a variety of media to draw from such as fitness magazines, hairy bear blogs and Google to find inspiration for a new painting based on the play, after being creatively blocked around painting, having a theme to work inspired DoN to paint again. DoN saw Hal through Jersey Shore eyes with “the situation” and “GTL” representing the young prince, the hairy bear as Falstaff and a leather bar of conspirators based on a painting by John Cawse.
Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1 in the Black Box Theater in the Saint Steven’s Theater is running in conjunction with the Lantern Theater Company’s production of the Shakespeare historical play.
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