DoNArTNeWs

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“I came to book arts as a librarian’s daughter and my poor father practically had a heart attack when he found out I was applying to grad school to do book arts.  ’Those are those nut jobs that take books and nail them to canvasses and call them art.’” said Tara O’Brien during her artist talk at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.  ”A lot of what I was dealing with in Graduate School was making sure that that’s not what I’m doing, I’m not desecrating the Book. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what is the future of the book, where is it going?  In 2003 we were just getting into a huge tipping point with the Internet and you went there instead of to a book, unless you were my father.  A lot of that time was spent thinking, ‘What is a book?  What can it be? What’s the conceptual quality of the book?’ And so for the early pieces in the show, these two Thread of Thought and Plenum in the back is what could it be?”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“Plenum, for example, is a term physicists use to describe all of the matter in the universe.  So, what is a book, what can it be?  It can be anything in the Universe.  As I was talking earlier about Plenum the other thing I wanted you to do is approach the book when it was closed and when you open it it reveals a completely different structure inside, a surprise in finding a book. Which is what you get when you approach a novel and find that that stellar writing you kind of think, ‘Oh, they wrote that so beautifully.’  So, how can you combine the two in art and literature?  How does a book work physically? How do you read a book page by page and how do you follow the threads of what the author is trying to get through to you?  And then you can break it down to how are the symbols on the page giving you this linking.  And that’s why I chose crocheting instead of knitting because each chain in a crochet is a link from one to the next one but you can build so much from a crochet chain.  Both of these books are a single thread all the way through the entire book, the whole narrative, if you will, from the thread references as a you read a book.  Like when you’ve gone fifty pages and and you don’t remember turning a single page because you’ve gotten so caught up in this single thread.”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA, Hyperbolic Space

“Or you get to the point in a book here where you do realize your turning pages faster than you think.”  Tara demonstrated how many of the pages pull the others with the thread and pages fly by like a magicians deck of cards.  ”And finally you almost turn in junior English denouement.  So those books lead to thinking metaphysically, ‘What is the future of the book?’  I have no idea.  Do I think books are going out of style?  No.  Not a chance, they just have a chance to evolve now.  We’ve got eReaders, they’re here to stay, have fun with them but come back to these.  The next group is the little tiny ones they all fall under the title Entelechy, Aristotle’s philosophy that every entity has a force that drives it to self-fulfillment and I just really like that idea.  I’d like to know what this force is?  What is it made up of?  How does it break down?  And in making these books I found that opening a page spread in a book is also kind of a metaphor for life.”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“If you do these stitches you can see the full spread of a chapter or a moment to a link in your life.  For example, as of now, all of February is one page spread for me, I don’t know what’s happening right now in this page spread but I can turn the page back in time and look at what happened in February in my life, and it’s clear now.  Whereas in February I had no idea.  A little crazy, right?  I was really excited about this show because it offered me a chance to do new work.  I do a lot of knitting, a lot of crocheting and I’m interested in a lot of things, I’m a library conservator so I get to look at a lot of old stuff, at ancient patterns and I get to look at old cookbooks and all these things that people have been doing forever.  How are we going to interpret it?”

“My Winter project this year was to knit a pair of Latvian mittens, in Latvian culture for years and years and years the girls know they will marry at age sixteen and they make these incredibly complex mittens, one pair for every member of the family of her future husband.  So, she’s been knitting five hundred pairs of mittens by the time she’s sixteen.  They’re complex and double stranded and they start knitting when they’re five years old, it’s part of the culture.”

“Fast forward to 1995, and we have a mathematician from Latvia who finally solves the problem of making a model for hyperbolic space.  So, what’s hyperbolic space?  Well I’m going to do my best, but, it’s a mathematical thing - continuously negative space.  It’s the ruffles on your lettuce, and what she was able to do was disprove Euclid’s theorum, given one straight line and a point off of the line there is only one other parallel line only.  But this theorum doesn’t work on a globe but nobody could prove how it didn’t work and why not?  In the 50’s they started experimenting with paper models but paper if you cut it, it falls apart.”

“So this person from a knitting culture sat down and said, ‘I know how to do this.’  And so she took these specifically exponentially increased, this one is six to one, you can see these two lines, when you take this continuously negative space and fold it you can bring two lines together and you get a set of parallel lines.  As you go on with these, it takes forever to make a row, and then you take another fold and lay it next to that and now you have three parallel lines.

So, this is important for me because it references back to my idea of linking and connecting everything, here’s a woman who just knitted all the time because she was so practiced at it, all of a sudden these higher level ideas were coming out her just regular handwork and solving really massive problems.  This book talks about the connection of this handwork from just the regular linking these little moments, these tiny little pearls of brilliant thoughts and made some coherence out of these higher thoughts.  I hope that that makes sense.”

Fiber Philadelphia 2012 

Thread of Thought at Center for Emerging Visual Artists  through March 23rd.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer, DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog Google and Wikipedia was used extensively to write this article.

Read more about FiberPhiladelphia2012 at Side Arts with Cassandra Hoo’s excellent article.

[disclosure page] All ad links in this blog post go to Amazon.com

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve - Images from Eraserhood

The Photographic Society of Philadelphia’s current solo show is photographer and blogger Bob Bruhin, at the reception in the comfy Cafe Twelve, 212 S. 12th Street,  Bob explained to a group of society members his collection of photographs.  “This is a small selection that I call Images from the Eraserhood, it’s photos that were taken originally for my blog eraserhood.com, which is discussing the neighborhood North of Vine Street, South of Spring Garden Street, East of Broad Street and West of 7th or 8th depending on how you determine it.  It’s an historically industrial neighborhood that used to have the Reading Railroad running through it, there a big old thing called the Reading Viaduct which was where the railroad ran before they built commuter tunnels.  It’s filled with old industrial properties, beautiful stunning buildings.  In the mid to late 60’s the artist David Lynch lived there, he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy and the geography and the look and the tone of that neighborhood of that time inspired his first feature film entitled Eraserhead (Import, All Regions).  So recently as the neighborhood has developed it’s taken on the name Eraserhood, it kind of stuck to the neighborhood,”

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve - Images from Eraserhood

“All that fascinated me when I came to work there, I work in a building called the Wolf Building which is an emblem of the factories and condos and offices and apartments, all manner of things.  Rick Wright has his studio in that building.  At the time I was originally photographing only using a cell phone, so what I was doing was taking composite images panoramically, specifically to build up a large enough image to make it worth the trouble.  Eventually I found it amusing enough that I started to use a real small Nikon point and shoot, a simple Nikon Coolpix L20 10MP Digital Camera. But since I became addicted to the panoramic process at that point, I continued to do that and started building larger images, I worked with exposure stacking and high dynamic range to intensify the color and textures of the images.”

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve - Images from Eraserhood

“So it’s kind of an historical study but it’s supposed to be a bit of a twisted historical study just because of the twisted history of the neighborhood, the tone of David Lynch’s work kind of inspired that. I was further inspired by the fact that it is now a National Historic Landmark called the Callowhill Historic District which has all of these buildings in this show are from the Callowhill Historic District set…these have all been done with the panoramic process and have been enhanced with exposure stacking and high dynamic range.  I bracket all my exposures and combine them digitally at the end wih a more even exposure and also to capture all the texture that I can possibly capture.”

All photographs courtesy of the artist, Bob Bruhin:
- http://bob-bruhin.com/
- http://eraserhood.com/
- http://LandMarrx.com/
Read other reviews of PSoP photographer Karen Schlechter on DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog and Jeff Stroud on Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog

Movies by David Lynch

Lost Highway

Wild at Heart [Blu-ray]

Mulholland Dr.

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Terrorarium! Or How I Put an End to My Nightmares of 9/11, John Baccile, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Yeoun Lee, Untitled, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club: Ann LaBorie, Blossoms, collage/watercolor, S.M. Pfaffenbichler, Fresh Air, watercolor, Marlene Bugansky, Flowers, acrylic, Gail Zelikovsky, Always Looking Up, silk painting and Ellen LoCicero, On Green Mountain, oil

Neil Johnson, Tiny Dancer, photograph, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

At the book party for Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic, Neil Johnson asked DoN when the drop off deadline for the Small Worlds 2012 show at The Plastic Club was?  Yikes, today.  Neil had his work ready but thought the delivery was the following weekend and missed the drop off deadline.  DoN took the aspiring photographer aside in the crowded noisy Smile Gallery and advised him to call The Plastic Club in the morning and explain to the exhibitions chair the situation, to be contrite and volunteer to help.  Neil stared at DoN a moment in befuddlement and repied, “I’ll do it.”  He did and took home an honorable mention!

Janice R. Moore, Circus Fantasy, mixed media, Garden Dream, mixed media and Bob Jackson, Young Cocks, junk and stuff, Identical Chicks, junk and stuff at Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Lauren Rinaldi, Birthday, oil on cradled wood and Heather Riccardi, The Waiting, acrylic, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

John Baccile, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Rick Wright, Fianchetto, photo simulacra, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Mina Smith Segal, The Constitution Crowd, Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club

Small Worlds 2012 at The Plastic Club includes one hundred eighty six small art works, the only caveat the piece could not be bigger than 16″ in either direction.  It’s fun for DoN to glean some images from a big show like Small Worlds for DoNArTNeWs, matching the image with title in the brochure (The Plastic Club uses a numbering system instead of labels) to discover his photographic eye is drawn to the same artists again and again.  Please add a comment to the blog if you’ve seen the show and tell DoN which is your fave.

Photos by DoN Brewer

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Women of Vision: 2012 Barbara Gesshel at Hidden River Gallery 

Barbara Gesshel, “I’m a painter and printmaker and a muralist.  My paintings have mostly been skies and clouds, water recently.  But, the prints are mono-prints, I also do woodcuts.  I was a printmaking major at UArts and then traveled to Norway where I was was studying the work of Edvard Munch and then I matriculated at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art and then I went to the University of Oslo to learn Norwegian. Which, I’m still fluent in.”DoN asked how Barbara Gesshel ended up in Philadelphia?  ”Well, I came back,”  ”Everyone comes back!”, DoN interrupted, “Not really.  My father had given me money for a Eurail pass and return passage.  And then I found out I had to pay him back.”  DoN, noted, “That’s a Women’s History moment.”

“When I came back, the school I was teaching in, I worked so I could get back to Norway.  I literally just fell in love with the country.  I became a painter and a printmaker when I came back, very much influenced by Munch’s color in his later work…Munch was very funny.  He would continue to repeat a theme, the kiss, the scream, the bridge, vampire, these were his early ones and he would paint them in many different ways.  His later work, he did murals at the University in a series of huge murals and he did these paintings of the people, the peasants, the workers.  He did these larger than life paintings that literally have coming out in a multitude of colors that you wouldn’t think to use for skin color.”

“Now, I’m working at a University City High School mentoring program doing murals and they’ve never really painted.  The other artist is having them work on parachute cloth and they’re making little words that represent things.  And we find we’re working on masonite panels, this is all their work, I show them and they do it so that they’re actually using color as much as possible.  Each kid has a brush and a pan of all the colors, one on top of the other, the concept is it starts at the top and then moves down organically. Nothing is set in stone.  And therefore there is no such thing as a mistake, the greatest thing you can teach a kid.”

Barbara Gesshel Richter Hell, monoprint on paper, DoN lifted from Barbara Gesshel’s HeavyBubble bubble

Women of Vision: 2012 at the Hidden River Art Gallery and Salon, 525 South 4th Street, Philadelphia hosted by Debra Leigh Scott through April 30, 2012.

DoN will be posting stories about the other featured artists Pamela Peitzman, Madeline Bates, Lauren Acton, Lilliana Didovic and Maria Lourdes Soloman on upcoming DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog posts.

Read more about Women of Vision 2012 at Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog
Photographs by DoN Brewer
Blick Art Materials’ Current Promo Code
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Women of Vision: 2012 Lilliana S. Didovic, Philly Abstract, at Hidden River Gallery

Women of Vision: 2012 Lilliana S. Didovic, Night, at Hidden River Gallery

“I knew Debra Leigh Scott years ago since she was running Enclave Gallery and she picked me as one of the Da Vinci Art Alliance artists to show in an exhibit.  Since then we keep seeing each other at different events and she sent me an e-mail and invited me to be part of this show.  I submitted some of my pieces, there is nine pieces all together here, which is good.”  Lilliana S. Didovic is prolific, working multiple canvasses with paint and mixed media, DoN wondered what she’s working on now? “Just last night we had a fabulous book party at Smile Gallery for Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic!  It was a really great success.  My new pieces are related to South Street, some sparkling with mirrors and rhinestone.  Now I’m having a related exhibit at the Lantern Theater related to love and loss, Romeo and Juliet.  Recently, in Millville NJ, I’m part of HERSTORY 2012: Ladies of Leonardo.”

Women of Vision: 2012 Lilliana S. Didovic, Day, at Hidden River Gallery

DoN commented that Lilliana has two Women’s History shows running simultaneously.  “I think all month’s should be dedicated to women!”, said Lilliana laughing.  “They have such an important part of history of the world.  Taking care of everybody in the world. Ha, ha, ha!”  DoN persisted, “As someone who’s seen a lot more of the world than most Philadelphian’s, our people are famous for never leaving their own neighborhoods, you have lived in many, many places what do you see from women artists today?” Lilliana said, “Women are just as productive as a man, there is no difference, to be motivated in different ways.  I’m not just separating women from men because a lot of men’s art is not different than the women.  Women in their mind are being men and men in their mind are being women and then men do with men in their mind and women do with women in their mind.  Everything is all around, whatever way you’re motivated, you’re making your art.”

Women of Vision: 2012 at the Hidden River Art Gallery and Salon, 525 South 4th Street, Philadelphia hosted by Debra Leigh Scott through April 30, 2012.

DoN will be posting stories about the other featured artists Pamela Peitzman, Barbara Gesshel, Madeline Bates, Lauren Acton and Maria Lourdes Soloman on upcoming DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog posts.

Read more about Women of Vision 2012 at Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog

Photographs by DoN Brewer

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Soldenise Ramos-Gonzalez, Pink Self Portrait, acrylic, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012

The Philadelphia Sketch Club is America’s oldest artist club established in 1865, for the past twenty-eight years the historic club has honored Philadelphia High School art students with an exhibition of work selected from all of the High Schools in the city.  On February 19th, 2012 the awards ceremony and closing reception took place in the historic gallery and more than twenty awards were presented to Philadelphia High School art students or their teachers.  The generous awards included monetary awards for the top winners and the many memorial awards, wonderful gift packages of art supplies for honorable mentions made the presentation go on for almost thirty minutes, and a wonderful reception with tons of food for hungry teens.  Congratulations to all the artists from DoNArTNeWs.

Emanuel Rodriguez, Living Room, Best in Show, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012

The High School Art Show at Philadelphia Sketch Club included 149 works of art for the jurors to select from.  Mina Smith-Segal, Lois Schlachter and Joseph Winter spent hours winnowing down their faves but with 22 awards almost of the schools took home prizes.  DoN was impressed by the high level of craft and presentation, even without frames many pieces were appropriately matted to best effect.

Ada Anderson, Self Portrait/Woman, Digital Photo Award, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012

Ada Anderson told DoN her teacher pushed her to take her Photoshop skills to the max, sending her back to the computer to refine the photo over and over; Ada took her original self portrait then used the star paintbrush tool to decorate her scarf, layers of rainbow gradient are subtle mimics lens flare.  Digital Photo Award well deserved.

Linda Lvea, Travis Balker, acrylic, Kimberly Neubauer, John Frusciante, acrylic, Catherine Cordoza, Steve Jobs, acrylic, Tara Downey, Steve Buscemi, acrylic, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012.  The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush, Graphic Arts Teacher Jeff Evans

Maisum Shami, Cast Drawing, conte, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012, Dick Blick Award

Miranda Gibson, Chair/Space Study, mixed media, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012

Dorothy Roschen, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 28th Annual High School Art 2012

Special thanks to all the donors of awards, volunteers for hanging the show, food donations, committee co-chairs Debra Cooperstein and Dorothy Roschen, Jaqueline Barnette, Jaqueline and Richard Kunin, Mina Smith Segal, Norka Shedlock, Catherine Bath, Joanne Bosack, William C. Patterson PSC President and Executive Director Richard W. Fink, III.

Dorothy and the team begins work of this project in September to present a wonderful example of the state of the arts in High School.  Expressing creativity and ideas through the arts is essential for young people to learn in order to communicate more effectively in the adult world.  The skill of being able to draw is underestimated in society.  Support the arts by helping the Philadelphia Sketch Club 29th Annual High School Art Show even bigger and better, in only takes volunteer time to make a big difference in a young artists life.

Photographs by DoN Brewer
Students, get the best service, selection and price: shop at BLICK!

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Lilliana Didovic, Of South 2, Smile Restaurant, Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic Book Signing Party, 2/25/2011, Instagram.

A brisk north wind bit into DoN’s face as he walked up 22th Street to Smile Restaurant on a Saturday night for his book signing party.  Lilliana and Joseph reserved the dining room upstairs and invited all of our friends to celebrate the publication of Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic.  The creation of the book was an adventure in itself, DoN is a blogger, publication in print is not a goal for DoNArTNeWs.  DoN is into page impressions, rankings and search engine optimization results and the effects of reporting on Philadelphia art in Google.  But Lilliana said DoN’s writing uses “nice words”.

Lilliana proposed collecting reviews from DoN’s blog posts with her art in book form, an art book to sell and use to further her career as a painter.  Writing a book and writing a blog are not the same thing, page layout in a column is very different from designing a book.  A blog you can always go back and fix, a book is a one shot deal.  No pressure.  The book is published by CreateSpace on Amazon.com.  The 98 page book is full color, 9.5 x 11″ glossy soft cover with beautiful prints, even now when DoN thumbs through it feels surreal that an actual, tangible product has emerged from his writing.

Beyond Lilliana and DoN’s wildest expectations, right at 6:00pm people emerged from the freezing Winter evening to crowd into the dining room made ready with a table full of beautiful Thai appetizers by chef Ken and Lilliana’s own famous Bosnian chicken salad.  The wine flowed and people actually lined up to buy books and sit with the Lilliana and DoN to have their copy autographed.  C. Todd Hestand the mastermind behind the Side Arts blog platform which enabled the bulk of the material used in the book was there chatting with artists, gallery owners and educators…Lola Z, Spike, Ted and Ona (the Ona-bomber), Carl and Liz, Regina, Steve, Chris Z, Rachel, Kathryn, Dr. & Mrs. Dunn, Gordan’s liver transplant doctor…OMG - it was so crowded and the roar of conversation was so loud that Chris Z yelled in DoN’s ear, “I think there are a lot of Bosnians here!”  The evening was wonderfully cosmopolitan, so many languages, so many people from all diverse backgrounds, artists and entrepreneurs, all together in the middle of down town Philadelphia for something as East Coast elite and snobbishly intellectual as a book signing party.  DoN LoVeD IT!!!  The night will always be one of DoN’s most memorable moments.

Thank you so much to Lilliana and Joseph for hosting a beautiful evening.  This fantastic team of husband and wife, who have been through so much, have shown hospitality towards DoN that has always been exceptional.  Telling  Lilliana’s amazing story with DoN’s writing and information design is an accomplishment DoN has only dreamed about until now.

Lilliana Didovic, The City, Smile Restaurant, Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic
Book Signing Party, 2/25/2012.

Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic, Lilliana S. Didovic book signing party, February 25th, 2012.

Other stories about Lilliana S. Didovic: Lilliana Didovic @ TRUST, Lilliana’s Tales, Her Philadelphia Tales, Structure and Gesture

[disclosure page]

Leap Year!  DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog achieved a new milestone for page views topping 2000 unique visitors on one day, February has seen a consistent climb in page views achieving the highest rankings for the blog so far.  DoN is also a Contributing Writer to Side Arts Philadelphia art blog and is participating in a demonstration on how to write a blog post on the Side Arts platform at the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at the University of the Arts, March 24th, 2012, 1 -3:00pm.

Get tickets http://corzocenter.ticketleap.com/side-arts-demo/

Prince Twins Seven-Seven, Igarra, Nigeria, 1944 - 2011, Acrobatic Dancers, 2007, oil, acrylic, ink and pastel on plywood, Indigo Arts, Crane Arts Center

“Prince Twins Seven-Seven is an artist from Nigeria who actually passed away last June.”  Indigo Arts Gallery owner Tony Fisher explained to DoN, “He was probably the most prominent living Nigerian artist at the time and he spent quite a lot of time in Philadelphia.  The last fifteen years he spent a lot of his time in Philadelphia because he was in some degree in exile from Nigeria both political problems and personal financial problems.  He was in Philadelphia for quite a while, the last five years or so he was back in Nigeria before he passed away.  But, he was told since he has a Green Card he could come back and forth every six months.  He would stop in every six months, and in a lot of the cases, bring me new work.”

Prince Twins Seven-Seven, Monkey with Fish, 2007, oil, acrylic, ink and pastel on plywood, Indigo Arts, Crane Arts Center

“He was not born with the name Prince Twins Seven-Seven, he took that name on to commemorate the fact that according to his mother, according to him, he was the sole survivor of seven successive sets of twins.  Obviously the child death rate in a country like that is high, seven sets of twins in a row and they all died in childbirth or whatever, even his own twin died.  It’s not totally unbelievable in that Nigeria, the Yoruba people of Nigeria gave the highest rate of twins on Earth.  As a result of that, in their religion there is a special place for twins.  There’s a cult called the Ibedgi cult that honors twins with these little figures that are carved that represent when one or both twins die the figures represent them.  Either the surviving twin or the mother of the deceased twins will keep that figure and honor it, feed it, dance with it in ceremonies, things like that for the rest of her life.  There’s really a special place for twins in that culture.”

Prince Twins Seven-Seven, Indigo Arts, Crane Arts Center

“In his case I think he had a real flair for names, in general he had a flare for drama and I think he had the second Seven because it sounded better than Twin Seven.  This was in 1964, which was in kind of the era of 77 Sunset Strip so he didn’t credit it to that but Seven-Seven had a good sound to it.  So he emerged as in artist in 1964 when he first started painting and he was immediately very successful in Nigeria.  He appeared in shows all over the world, several museum shows in Europe, he was really a very big name.  In the period that he was in Philadelphia he was kind of in decline, I think he had kind of been forgotten and he was really, well it was in the last five years that he was really beginning to revive again.  There were several shows of his work, the Philadelphia Art Museum bought a major piece that they have there now, the Smithsonian has one of his pieces, so, he was picking up but he didn’t get to enjoy it for long.  Unfortunately, it’s like so many artists’ tale, I’m sure it won’t happen instantly but his reputation will rise again since we’re now looking back on him as a key figure of post independence African art.”

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Photographs by DoN Brewer

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Ellie Brown, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Brenna K. Murphy, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Clarissa Shanahan Schirmer, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Jim Houser, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Jung Wah Ahn, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Jordan Griska, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

LGTripp Gallery, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Donna Usher, LGTripp Gallery, InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012, ICE Box Gallery, Crane Center for the Arts

Rachel Zimmerman, the mastermind behind the artist representation website InLiquid, sent DoN a FaceBook message asking if he had received his V.I.P. invitation to the  InLiquid v.12 Benefit Auction 2012?  DoN double checked his inbox and passes to the pre-opening Silent Auction cocktail party for the biggest art event in town unopened.  Cool!  4:00 - 6:30pm, Friday February 10th - DoN had copped the ultimate art party early-bird special!

The ICE Box Gallery in the Crane Center for the Arts is massive but the hall was filled with art of all kinds, tables brimming with collectibles throughout the room, even extra walls to accommodate the array of art and DoN had it all to himself, sort of, for about thirty minutes.  Wandering through the collection DoN spotted familiar artists from across Philadelphia and lots of new faves.  A cocktail bar was in the middle of the room and a bartender made DoN a drink with gin, aloe vera juice and muddled basil, in the Gray Area (the large gallery next to the ICE Box) tables with fantastic treats like a thin crustini with a smear of sun dried tomato paste topped with a dollop of pate’.  Displayed around the room were silent auction bidding sheets for dozens of desirable services and a group of prints selected by jurors from submissions.  So, even if you didn’t win your bid you can still buy a collectible art print.

Soon DoN had a good buzz going from the gin, wandered back in the hall to absorb the sights and ran into artist Amie Potsic.  Walking and talking we were struck by the high quality of the art: a bold red and black painting by Da Vinci Art Alliance Executive Director David Foss, massive abstract expressionist paintings by one of Amie’s faves, Jung Wah Ahn, Brenna K. Murphy’s hair art, Ellie Brown’s bag photographs (she photographs people and the contents of the bag they carry) and so much more by many great Philadelphia artists.

Amie Potsic is an artist, photographer, maven, Director of Career Development at CFEVA, and has been an InLiquid member artist since it’s inception in 1999 - that’s pre-Google.  Amie told DoN the more web presence she has the better.  InLiquid is a non-profit organization providing hundreds of artists not just portfolio web pages but real world opportunities to show their artwork, their website is information rich with artist images, bio’s, statements, events and news.  Some of the donated art is still for sale on the InLiquid website.  Support the efforts of InLiquid artists and businesses who gave so generously from their own inventory to help the artist community hub in Fishtown grow and thrive.

More photographs on DoNArTNeWs FaceBook page.

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Photographs by DoN Brewer

Daniel Gerwin, Orpheus’ Mistake, acrylic on found framed mirror, 28″ x 17.5″, 2011, Center for Emerging Visual Artists at the Galleries at Moore (photo from the West Collects website - vote for Daniel Gerwin)

DoN met Daniel Gerwin at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Introduction 2012 new Fellows reception at the Galleries at Moore.  “Title Magazine is the title of a new on-line, visual arts magazine based in Philadelphia.  We launched in August.”  DoN asked what platform the magazine is based on?  Tumblr?  “It’s on WordPress, I’m not the technical guy, I’m into the editing and all that side of it, getting writers and whatever.  We have someone else who’s a very good graphic designer and she does everything.  All the WordPress work.  I can’t, I don’t know anything about it.”, he said laughing.  DoN added a link to Title Magazine in the DoNArTNeWs blogroll.

Daniel’s work employs tromp l’oeil in a new way, painting on wood and mirrors, DoN is reminded of the painting style of Gerhard Richter the way the paint is smeared yet presents a naturalistic expression, “When you look at it, it’s immediately clear that it’s paint.  The other piece that I have is a shaped painting.”  DoN was mesmerized by the optical illusion of the painting, it switches back and forth from wood parquet to abstract painting.  “The tromp l’oeil, I’m interested in, the whole idea of an illusion, that is subverting itself and actually calling your attention back to what’s real about it, it’s reality of the actual paint in front of you.  But I’m also interested in the whole idea of, like the first thing you said about parquet flooring, the domestic space and the way we inhabit our space.  And then I sort of have the thought that the way, as we live in a space over time, we actually come to haunt that space ourselves.  And then it haunts us back.”

“It’s that integration between us and the place that we live.  My studio is in my own home, I work in my home so that idea of a presence is interesting to me.  The other thing that is on my mind with these mirrors is there’s a tradition in the Jewish religion, which is how I was raised, when somebody in your family dies you cover the mirrors.  My mother died in 2009, so there’s something of that that is still part of my work and there’s that aspect that I’m thinking about and it also has to do with when you, because there’s bits or mirror that you look between, you do catch glimpses of yourself.  There is both the sense of self-voyeurism and a further extension of the mystery of representation, you’re there but you’re sort of not quite there.  But that there is a division brought by the paint between our world and the other side.  So that connects back to me through those traditions.”

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), in cooperation with Moore College of Art & Design, presents an exhibition by the new Career Development Program Fellows. A highly selective fellowship with only a 2% acceptance rate, these six artists represent some of the most promising talent among emerging artists in the region:  Leslie Friedman, Daniel Gerwin, Rebecca Gilbert, Kay Healy, Heechan Kim, and Johanna Inman.

Introduction 2012

February 1 – February 25, 2012

Widener Memorial Foundation Gallery

Johanna Inman

Leslie Friedman

Rebecca Gilbert

Kay Healy

Heechan Kim

Circumstantial Assembly / CFEVA at Moore 

Introduction 2011

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Photographs by DoN

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