DoNArTNeWs

The Plastic Club @ 247 South Camac Street is hosting a new art show – small WORLDS exhibition.  All works in the show must be less than 16” in any direction including 2D and 3D works by hundreds of artists; there are 182 artworks in the show, no small feat to install.  But, the committee performed wonders in creating groupings, tableau and mise en seine drawing the visitor into tiny spaces packed with authenticity, superior craftsmanship and creativity.  Karl Olsen’s “A” is a masterful painting of his ubiquitous hat, Alden Cole entered a wildly erotic fantasy, Doris Peltzman’s “Portrait of Amber” is haunting and masterful…

small WORLDS opens February 1^st – here’s a sneak peek. 

DoN Brewer’s “light being (Chink)“, Ellen Grenwell’s “4:12 AM, Please Kitty“, Rob Willis‘ “Ichibano” & Hugo Hsu’s “Tenguska“. 

small Worlds @ The Plastic Club. 

Alden Cole’s “Embrace No. 2“. 

The opening reception and awards is Sunday, February 1st, 2009, 2 - 5:00 PM.

Catherine Zeidler’s eponymous gallery at 2207 South Street has become the Women’s Creative Alliance featuring the art of Philadelphia area women.  The current exhibit features 3D work by Dorothy Roschen, jewelry by Barb Baur as well as pastels and paintings by Patricia Woodruff.  The theme throughout the show is how spirituality is filtered through the creative arts.  Roschen, who taught art in high school for many years, creates mysterious sculptures of glass, clay and objet trouve suitable sitting on a table or hanging on the wall.  Dorothy develops designs exploring positive and negative space, hard and soft surface and translucence vs. solidity. 

Woodruff’s drawings and paintings depict sprites, spirits, fairies and gods of old in fluid, sensuous lines and serious color, her high school friend Barb Bauer creates designs reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or Celtic knots in silver.  Both Woodruff and Bauer enjoy spending time in Floyd, VA, and a vibrant arts community enabling them both to find expression through the sense of community and variety of artists who migrate there.  Bauer has begun experimenting with hard metals such as steel and is developing a series of pennular brooches appropriate for clasping an ancient cloak or a modern scarf.

The art party Friday evening brought out a good crowd even though it was only 19 degrees outside but with warmth and friendship found inside this great art space on South Street.

Wall sculpture by Dorothy Roschen @ WCA. 

Dorothy Roschen @ WCA. 

Dorothy Roschen @ WCA. 

Silver jewelry by Barb Baur. 

“Thought and Memory“, pastel by Patricia Woodruff depicts Odin with his ravens.

“Gentle Thoughts” by Patricia Woodruff. 

October 23rd, Alden Cole and DoN attended the opening of the Green Exhibit at Philadelphia City Hall, the 56th group exhibit for local emerging and professional artists with the exhibit focussing on concerns about our environment.  The art display cases have been updated with improved lighting and larger exhibition space allowing the 45 participating artists to show their own take on what it means to be green.  Carol Cole has always reused cast away objects to include in her striking sculptures which appear to made of metal and stone but usually turn out to be styrofoam and plastic - so clever.

Sculptor Carol Cole @ The Green Exhibit.

Dolores Poacelli @ Art in City Hall’s Green Exhibit.  Dolores reuses used aluminum printing plates which she dumpster dives for even though the rats scare her.  These two amazing pieces still reveal traces of the imagery that came before she sanded, rusted and glued the panels onto wood.

Gregory Farrar Scott’s Mask # 40 and Mask # 41 @ The Green Exhibit.

Junk Mail Shag by Valerie Linhart created with shredded junk mail.  DoN LoVeS iT!!!  The Green Exhibit @ Art in City Hall runs through January 23, 2009.  Support your local artists and go buy some art since their are no commissions and the quality is so high.  DoN even got to say,”Hi!” to Mayor Nutter. 

Sandra Benheim’s “Museum Pass“, a collage of museum passes and maps.  Art in City Hall, Philadelphia.

Paula Mendel’s “Growth Where You Least Expect it” @ Art in City Hall.

October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 

DoN opened his studio to the public again this year with hundreds of other Philly artists participating in Philadelphia Open Studio Tours.  Visitors signed the giant “Hello My Name Is…” sign that he received as part of Newstoday Print Exchange 4.  DoN’s MoM, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and friends stopped by to view recent drawings, paintings and prints.  POST is a great way to meet other artists and make new friends as well as sell some art.  Thanks so much to good friends Shoshana and Alden with their help and support; it’s a lot of work.  KaTy the ArT DoG and her pal Doofie, the St. Bernard/Chihuahua mix greeted visitors with wagging tails and lots of slobber.  This year the tour started West of Broad Street so DoN didn’t get to visit friends such as Paul DuSold or Betsy and Burnell but DoN’s MoM did and is still talking about how Nora the Piano Playing Cat plinked out a tune for her - thanks Nora!  Panoramic shot of DoN’s Nude Room.

East of Broad Street was super-exciting with dumpster diver Alden Cole’s spectacular display of drawings, paintings, luminaries and found object constructions.  Alden has returned to his painting roots and is producing interesting compositions packed with metaphors, narrative and deeply personal spiritual art works.  Obviously it’s too much to see all the studios in one wekend but I’m sure if you contact Alden he would be more than happy to allow you to explore four floors of art.Panoramic shot of Alden Cole’s kitchen gallery.  Cole is having an exhibition at Smile Gallery in November. 

Robert Stauffer in his quirky alley gallery @ 7th & Federal.  Stauffer’s mixed media, paintings and photos were super-fun especially viewed in one of Philly’s famous narrow alleyways.

Dr. Doris Peltzman with friend Reta Sweeney at Morris Street Studios deep in South Philly.  Peltzman is having a one woman show at the prestigious Carspecken Scott Gallery in Wilmington as well as a group show at Artist’s House. You go girl!!!  Doris is truly gifted and dedicated to producing work that stretches her limits with brilliant coloration, bold brushwork and subtle compositions.

Painting master, Francis Tucker, also at Morris Street Studio displayed just a few of his masterworks and demonstrated his proficiency at framing.  Tucker was DoN’s first painting mentor back in the day when UArts was still PCA and still teaches emerging artists skills involving materials and technique.

Artist Arthur Ostroff, also of Morris Street Studios, explained to DoN his plans for a one man show which has turned into a retrospective of his lifes work.  The exhibit, Arthur Ostroff Then and Now, will be at Montgomery County Community College West Campus Art Gallery, November 1 through December 19, 2008.

Mixed media collage by Art Ostroff.

Painting by Charles Cushing and sculpture by Carol Cole @ 915 Spring Garden art studios.

Frances Galante’s studio was humming with activity and filled with masterful landscapes and still iife paintings. DoN asked Galante about including architecture in her works, “I like to include architecture because it shows the human element and gives scale to painting.”  This past summer Frances painted at Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine at an artist’s colony.

Frances Galante’s Sailboat on the Delaware.

Ana B. Hernandez’ flamenco inspired hanging sculpture.  Ana tells DoN her work, “… attempts to capture the movement and energy as a visual vocabulary of the skirt of the dancer.”

Ana B. Hernandez @ 915 Spring Garden.

Wendy Wolf has a system of layering paint and then scraping away bits to reveal the layers, she then saves the bits in little boxes as a separate art object.  Wolf is also a jeweler producing beautiful necklaces and bracelets, she says, “…life is charmed.”  An MFA graduate of Tyler Art School, Wolf has been at 915 Spring Garden for more than two years.

The left over bits from a Wendy Wolf painting displayed in clear plastic boxes.

Peter Cunicelli’s studio @ 915 Spring Garden.  Each piece is handmade from slabs of clay allowing Peter to create space-age style ceramics perfect for contemporary interiors; Peter is working on producing multiples so he can offer table wares in his unique style.  Cunicelli was included in this summer’s Art of the State exhibit in Harrisburg. Congrats!

Brooke Hine’s studio displayed her ubiquitous organic ceramics; always interesting, delicate and absorbing sculptures in a style all her own.  Hine recently curated a fabulous show at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and was also included in the Art of the State show in Harrisburg.  DoN LoVeS Brooke!!!

LoVe

DoN All photos by DoNBrewerMultimedia.

CFEVA Introduction 2012
Blick Art Materials

Shoshka. Alden and DoN made the pilgrimage to Crane Arts Center in Fishtown to witness the spectacle of innovation, artistry and experience design the arts space is becoming famous for.The University of Delaware has taken over the old Busy Bee space and the current exhibition of MFA students is insightful and fun.  Looming over the first floor are fiber and plaster neuron-like constructs by the afore-mentioned Mark Donahue; similar to the Hopkins House installation, this time Donahue has balanced separate components on top of each other creating strange transmitters communicating in a language all their own.  DoN was greeted by the elegant Virginia Bradley, artist/curator/educator who shares a studio on the third floor with Chris Malcomson - Virginia and DoN commiserated over sharing studio space (more about that in a minute). 

Mark Donahue @ UD@Crane. 

Untitled, mixed media, Jim Reske.  Is this thing cool or what?  Simple sun-bleached plywood panels lean against the wall as if Josef Albers were in the house.

rickery, watercolor & ink on stretched & cut paper, Francine Fox @ UD@Crane.

Francine Fox displayed several three inch square paintings that are executed with virtuosity, flare and fluid surrealist imagination.  Like seeing a weird image in the clouds or faces in foam on the beach, Fox finds eery fractals of flesh, skin and organs which are all intricately applied to the glossy surface of the wood in delicate strokes of paint.

Anthony Vega with one of his multiple image paintings.  Vega uses a projector to capture multiple images within the plane of his painting.  Using found or original images he combines blobs of paint into pixel-like splotches which when viewed from a distance morph into pulsating icons that DoN’s brain tried to make sense of but was thwarted by the cacophony of ideas vying for attention.  Vega told DoN, “…it’s evidently handmade.”

Sho, Alden and DoN all LoVeD the balloon-stuffed panty hose, each of us explained the concept to at least one of our friends.  Like Christo’s temporary installations, these pieces will obviously deteriorate rapidly but will live on in memory and photographs.  Of course, one could always make more and have fun doing it.

At Nexus Gallery, our threesome was treated to a video installation by J. Makary and Bilwa as part of the Philly Fringe festival.  The gallery transformed into a movie theater with stadium seating presented an extraordinary video: part art movie, part music video, part dance performance with an emphasis on hand gestures and body language.  The saturated colors, quirky dance moves and evocative narrative was absorbing and abstract in it’s simplicity of experience design.

Nick of Nexus tells DoN the gallery will be installing a low powered community radio station ala Whitney’s Biennial radio station.  People can schedule air time by contacting the gallery. Lo-fi Coolness Rocks!

 Super Kawai Lil’ Lamb @ Nexus. 

Wednesday evening, Shoshana, Alden Cole and DoN attended Far Away From the Beginning A Departure from Childhood Idealism, an outstanding exhibit of contemporary art curated by Tara Caton, in cooperation with the Center for Emerging Visual Artists at Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at 33rd and Market Streets.  Tara Caton, a former intern at CFEVA, is graduating from Drexel with a degree in “Entertainment and Arts Management” and produced the show as her Senior Thesis Project.  Caton tells DoN she, “looked for artists with commonalities of themes, a number of artists work with dark memories from childhood, a childhood perspective with adult melancholy, fantasies, toys, play, dreams and memory.”  Tara selected all the works, wrote the text, produced the brochure and art card and installed the art; she will be the first to graduate with this degree and said it was a huge honor to do such a big job for an undergrad project.  The exhibit in the Pearlstein Gallery includes many familiar CFEVA artists including Anne Canfield, Darla Jackson, Joelle Jenson, John Karpinski, Jedediah Morfit, Caleb Nussear, Scott Pellnat, Peter Prusinowski, Serena Perone, Matthew Neff, Cecelia Rembert and Nataliya Slinko.  Far Away From the Beginning is on exhibit through September 5th.

Curator Tara Caton at The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.

Artist Scott Pellnat with his adorable little girl explaining his sculpture which looks like it’s made of cast iron but is really “off the shelf” plastic parts.  ”Why create your own figures when you can buy a Barbie?”

Each section of Pellnat’s sculpture is rearrangeable so you can customize the surprisingly light pieces of surrealist art to suit your mood.

Jedediah Morfit explaining his bas-relief sculpture; working in common, forgotten, traditional genres (museums are full of them) Morfit re-fashions the method into new and vital art.

Detail from Jedediah Morfit’s “The Price of Doing Business“.

Anne Canfield’s “The Mermaid and the Tiger Meet Halfway“, oil on linen.

John Karpinski is attracted to the paradox of comics and how they say a lot with so little. Through comics adults can regain time from their childhood; John’s childhood favorite comics were Daredevil # 158 and What If? # 15.

All photos by DoNBrewerMultimedia Photography.  

CFEVA Introduction 2012

Blick Art Materials

The Center for Emerging Visual Arts keeps raising the bar on curating art shows in Philadelphia, the current exhibit, Décor/Decorum, of photography, sculpted plates and plaster vignettes is simply exquisite like being plunked down into a scene on a Wedgewood plate only it’s in your eccentric grandmother’s white lacquered cabinet.  Photos of the interior of Joelle Jenson’s grandmother’s Florida home are a temporal distortion, the mostly white spaces combine a mix of natural and artificial light, memory and architecture, austere, fresh and clean - when fresh and clean didn’t mean you were hip-hop but a time when everything had a place and was in it, sparkly and shiny.  Joelle’s grandmother had glamour shots of herself stratigically displayed thoughout her immaculate home, even producing calendars with her beautiful image, her snow white hair perfectly coiffed, as gifts for family members. Now Grandma is a star in Joelle’s homage to an esthetic quickly disappearing from the American landscape; Joelle confided with DoN that the family used to ridicule their grandmother’s decorating style but when she died and Joelle’s parents moved in they didn’t change a thing.  Jenson has completed photographing her husband’s parents home in Florida and is working on a series from her other grandmother’s abode.  Jenson produces her work at The Camera Club  of New York and exhibits at Wall Space Gallery in Seattle.

Joelle Jenson@ Décor/Decorum @ CFEVA 

C-Print by Joelle Jenson @ CFEVA.

Jedediah Morfit’s carved plaster plates and vignette’s mounted on the wall compose a chilly counterpoint to Jenson’s photographs.  Morfit “explores irresistible contemporary taboos including craft, religion and narrative” (CFEVA art card).  The antechamber gallery features a wall of plates Jed told DoN was about “new temptations of Saint Anthony“, with the plates each featuring a modern tempting diversion.  The opposite wall has a striking series of bas-relief sculptures with antebellum women pushing wheelbarrows filled with bones and heads running from a rain of arrows - very powerful.  DoN overheard one patron say she felt she was in, “one of those blue plates”.  DoN suspects she meant Wedgewood china.  Morfit tells DoN these are the first in a series that will feature “tons of figures including flying monkeys”.

Bas-relief wall sculpture by Jedediah Morfit @ CFEVA.

Jedediah Morfit with his plaster plates in CFEVA’s main gallery.

All photography by DoNBrewerMultimedia 

Saturday, Shoshka and DoN visited the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Show House at 1634 South 13th Street, the former home and studio of artistScott Pellnat.  The townhouse is filled with art by CFEVA artists including Anne Canfield, Katie Murken, Julia Blaukopf, Kara Rennert, Caleb Nussear, Darla Jackson, Jennifer Chapman, Serena Perrone and of course Scott Pellnat’s wonderfully wacky constructions.  Pellnat is an accomplished woodworker and avid dumpster diver creating mechanical constructs out of marquetry of colored pencils, found objects and wood, there’s even a hidden room behind bookshelves which open by pulling on a book ala the Addams Family revealing robotic creatures pulling ropes and strings producing a dramatic diorama.

Looking up into the turret Pellnat built on the roof.

Looking down from the turret into the house - the walls are covered in colored pencil marquetry and the floors are spray painted through lace and stencils. 

The top floor is filled with a knitted installation with tendrils swooping through the room like some kind of giant alien brain cell.  The site specific piece was created by Katie Murken.

 Scott Pellnat in his “secret studio”.

As if the room isn’t creepy enough, there’s a gravity distortion which turns the room sideways!?! 

DoN posted a 30 second video on YouTube of the Super Mario Brothers music which is enchanting and magical; using the score from the video game soundtrack and sound effects from character/avatar interaction with puzzle elements in the game, the music is post-post-post modern.  The video is just part of the Golden Calf exhibit in the fabulously dark installation of paintings, photography and sculpture about decay, destruction, nausea and mysticism.  DoN found the art to be emotionally raw and psychologically dismal with elements of claustrophobia, isolation and estrangement; Hagit Barkai’s ”Vomitous” is awesomely powerful, the paintings are Bacon-like in their facility, the subject charged with feelings of fear, powerlessness and despair, the paint application is expert.  The artists of Golden Calf are establishing New Philadelphia as the art center of the region, unafraid to tackle the more difficult apects of modern life.

Brian Billingsley’s ”Homage to Me” video and “Untitled (Saturn Devours His Son)” oil on canvas in the Golden Calf Show at Crane Art Center.

Weird little blobby things were all over the place.

Super Mario Music!!! 

Boy Wonder

Monday’s at World Cafe Live on Walnut Street is open mic night (no cover charge), art friend Henry Martin was on the bill so Shoshka and DoNarrived early to find a comfortable table with the intention of video taping Henry’s performance. The show is emceed by Boy Wonder with acts ranging from singer/songwriters to rap/hip-hop to jazz groups, folk-rockers and rock bands - the featured group was Philly’s own HEAD who totally rocked the house with a five song set. DoN videotaped two songs and hopes to get permission to share the LoVe because HEAD’s lead singerLexi Greene is HOT and sing’s like an illegal clone of Grace Slick and Alanis Morissette, backed up by keyboardist/singer Tori Ryzner, drummer Ryan Jarrell, Mark Greene on bass and Michael Zimney on guitar the tight rocking songs left DoN’s ears ringing and the crowd cheering. Boy Wonder keeps the show rolling with early acts getting to do three songs, then the HEADliner gets five, then more groups get to do three songs, then back to singers/songwriters who get to perform two, the last few performers get to sing one song. DoN will have some clips of Henry and some of the other performers ready soon.

DoN and Sho felt bad for the two guys who had to follow all the rock bands but they totally took on the challenge with an acoustic guitar and an accordian!?! Ironically, DoN bumped into Patrick Welsh in Rittenhouse Square and found out his group is called The Writers Club and the accordian player hangs out in the Beauty Shop Cafe (DoN knew he looked familiar). DoN congratulated both guys for the gumption to get up and sing while the buzzed crowd talked over their set of Americana/Ghettotech/Folk songs. Hey, this what they call,”paying dues.” Another standout performer was Elle, a sultry, sophisticated Philly girl singer who has a new album coming out - Elle totally dominated the room with her soulful pop songs.

DoN’s gonna have to get a MySpace page so he can “friend” all this great talent but there was a joke in The New Yorker a while back - “What’s worse than your Dad having a MySpace page? Your Dad’s band having a MySpace page!” Since DoN isn’t a dad or have a band but is a great-uncle of adorable Jaelynn he’s been reticent, but watch for DoN on MySpace soon.

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