DoNArTNeWs

Scott Kip’s installation of sculptures represents the past, present & future; the center sculpture with s a step stool has the shadow of clockworks rotating and when you look through the hole someone at a sculpture at the other end of the room can see your eye.  Each piece is a meticulously constructed models create wonderful optical illusions of abstract art reminiscent to Albers, Indiana and Grooms.  The left side of the gallery is the future and the right is the past - from the future the view is confusing, the past you may find another eye looking back at you.

Scott Kip’s center sculpture projects the shadow of time in the center of a frail super-structure.  Scott told DoN it took more than a year to complete the project of hard woods and that he was inspired by the writing of T.S. Eliot. The result is ineffable.

Scott Kipp @ Wind Challenge #3, Fleisher Art Memorial.

Scott Kip

“I make model scale structures out of wood, each lit directly from above.  The structures are designed around the path light takes through them, both the light from above and the possible sight lines of the viewer.  The work is a meditation on how perspective affects our understanding of the relationships between things and the idea that life (the space between birth and death) is a place.”

“…Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell he passed the stages of his age and youth entering the whirlpool.”

Death By Water, T.S.Eliot

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography

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.

DoN Brewer, Denmark, photograph, Marie Samohod, Night Still Life, acrylic, Morris Klein, Washington Square, photograph and Eileen Eckstein, Finger Painting, photograph.

Tom McCobb, Adirondack Tea Party, oil.

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.

Brenna K. Murphy @ Wind Challenge Exhibitions #3, Fleisher Art Memorial.

Brenna’s installation @ The Fleisher Art Memorial is part drawing, part conceptual art, part performance art, part photography & part crafting like a recipe for 21st Century modern art.  Murphy uses human hair to draw on the walls, sews hair into her photographs and over time will wash the hairs off the wall to put in the bowls on the floor, an idea she came up with when she was de-installing her last show.

Brenna K. Murphy draws onto the photograph by sewing hair into the paper, creating an illusion of a documentary photo, DoN thought she had installed huge drawings of furniture like the ones in the gallery.

Detail of hair drawing on the wall @ Fleisher Art Memorial by Brenna K. Murphy - DoN had to do some Photoshop magic to get the delicate lines to appear for the web, in real life the stray strands are poetic and serene.

Human hair wall drawing of a dresser with a small bowl on the floor, each Wednesday Brenna plans to wash off some of the hair and put it in the bowls.  Brenna Murphy’s drawings are loaded like meme bombs filled with memory, loss, dreams, beauty, ritual, divinity all playing out on long stands on hair.  Filaments of the imagination.

Jacob Koestler ,Window, Rochester, NY, photograph, 2010.

Jacob Koestler lives in Johnstown, PA. near Pittsburgh where he is a member of a shared art space called 709 Railroad Street, his photographs are included in a group show at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, his second time showing in Philly.  Three years ago Koestler’s work was included in the first collabo with Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in the space on Rittenhouse Square.  In Selection From Cluster, the photographer was invited by Amie Potsic to include the group of photos based on a revenge dream narrative where a rich boy who wants to be a rock star inherits the perfect secluded mansion in Rochester, NY, equipped with all required to live the life of the privileged, surrounded by collaborators, a dream home for him in contrast to the suburban dream home his own father is building for himself.  The series is like a metaphor for art killing the father, each generation must claim their own turf.

Michael Sherwin, True North, pigment prints mounted to steel.  The series of prints explore fuzzy animism & techno-geek virtuosity - mounting the prints on steel is very cool, calculated & hard yet amorphous and squirmy like finding ancient artifacts from Mars.

“This exhibition exchange is part of an ongoing collaboration by CFEVA and PF/PCA Created in order to strengthen the artistic dialogue between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Cluster was originally presented at The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and curated by Adam Welch. The Philadelphia presentation of this exhibition was curated by Amie Potsic. Participating artists: Dee Briggs, Connie Cantor, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Kyle Houser, Ben Kehoe, Jacob Koestler, Michael Sherwin, Lenore Thomas.”  CFEVA Website.

Dee Briggs

The steel draws lines of shadows in the alcove @ CFEVA Gallery, as the airy shape slowly rotated the play of light & dark created a living drawing.  DoN observed people dreamily staring, imagining how they could clear out their living room to make space for Dee Briggs sculpture - the artists website is cool, too.  CFEVA  @ 15th & Locust Sts.

Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Test 32, gesso, ink & pigmented marker on canvas.  The large drawing is engrossing like looking at a Chuck Close.  Little blobby shapes coalesce and entwine, connecting dots in the brain, melding mind maps spread out across the canvas like an alien landscape, coordinates marks each other trying to signal and cooperate with all elements to capture your attention.  DoN loves marker art.

Selection From Cluster is a unique opportunity to view art from PA’s other big city - Jacob Koestler described to DoN a vibrant downtown art scene/district in Pittsburgh with a fun First Friday.  Thanks to CFEVA for opening the lines of communication with artists across PA.

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.

Photography by DoNBrewerPhotography.

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.

2010 Philadelphia Open Studio Tours -  pdf

Register @ http://www.philaopenstudios.com/Opportunities.aspx

Dog by Karen McDonnell & Anthony Cortosi perfectly encapsulates the theme of this groundbreaking, historic art show curated by Jody Schweitzer of Off the Wall Gallery @ Dirty Franks Bar on the corner of 13th & Pine Streets, bringing together artists from the dual art clubs, The Plastic Club & The Philadelphia Sketch Club on the historic Avenue of the Artists - a painting of a three-legged dog created in collaboration by an opposite sex couple.  The formally all female Plastic Club and the formally all male Philadelphia Sketch Club have been co-existing on the same block for decades - the Sketch Club is celebrating it’s 150th anniversary this year with a stunning array of historic art shows & the Plastic Club is nearly 100 - both clubs integrated sexes in 1991, since then Camac Street has become a fantastic haven for artists to work and learn side by side, the competition raising the bar for quality, prestige and creativity for everyone.  Alan Klawans, the exhibitions chair @ The Plastic Club, told DoN participation in art shows is up 300%; the current Small Oils Show @ PSC has 170 paintings, you couldn’t squeeze another piece in if you wanted to.

Karen & Anthony, create all of their art together: drawing, cutting, spraying, dumpster-diving, brain-storming…resulting in iconic imagery resonating with vibrant contemporary urban life.  Their work is proof men & women can work together in partnership, even if the result is like walking on three legs to get there.

The showcase @ Off the Wall Gallery with Dorothy Roschen, Cara Kendric and more, many of the artists are members of both clubs.

Mina Smith-Segal @ An Offering on Camac.  Mina won an award Saturday for a painting she created for the Lantern Theater Company’s Henry IV, Part 1 production, another art collaboration between the Da Vinci Art Alliance of South Philly and the St. Steven’s Theater in Center City - it’s art synergy, baby!

Sibylle-Maria Pfaffenbichler is getting terrific buzz for her jazzy paintings of couples dancing; every show they’re in is instantly energized by the bold color and confidant brushwork, capturing the attention of the viewer like watching a really good-looking couple dancing deep in the groove of the music in a smokey dive with a great juke-box.

An Offering on Camac @ Dirty Franks is the perfect third leg for an art crawl; after trying to absorb over 300 fantastic new art works on view between the two clubs current shows, a stiff drink is in order.  What do you call a one-eyed, three-legged dog?  Lucky.

Monday @ noon, a ceremony was held in the fabulous Please Touch Museum in the glorious Memorial Hall to introduce a new public art program called Phanatic Around Town, a project assigning artists a life size sculpture of the famous Phillies mascot, The Phanatic.  The anticipation was high as each artist was introduced and stood next to their covered art work - but then one of the sculptures came to life and the new RED Phanatic was introduced and with a flourish all the artists revealed their secret projects including Lillian Didovic and Ronnie Norpel of Da Vinci Art Alliance, the famous art club in South Philly.

Ronnie Norpel, the new Red Phanatic and Lilliana Didovic with their fantastic Phanatic collabo of images and phrases referring to Philly fan favorites from cheese steaks to the Art Museum to the Walt.  The duo’s work will be on display at The Convention Center on Independence Mall!  Lilliana is probably Philly’s biggest fan; the Phanatic Around Town project is the perfect way for Philly to LoVe Lilliana back!

Lilliana Didovic painted her iconic glamorous scenes of Philly paired with Ronnie Norpel’s poems - Norpel has just released her new novel, Baseball Karma & The Constitution Blues on Three Rooms Press.  Ronnie’s book release party is @ PATOU, 4/16, 9:00 PM.

Lilliana’s hubby has been hinting to DoN for months about her progress on the immense project as she worked in a neighbor’s garage; he and their son, Gordon - in full Phillie’s Fan gear - were present for Lilliana’s new pinnacle of success in the Philadelphia art world.

No! it’s not zombies - it’s all the Phanatics with open arms, perfect for embracing all the fans of the Phillies and the City That LoVeS You Back - thanks to the artists for bringing such joy, it really warms the heart to see a giggling little kid get hugged by the big hairy beast -  With LoVe Philadelphia XOXO!!!

The Phillie Phanatic Around Town as the Mad Hatter by Lorna Kent.

Phanatico Latino by Marta Sanchez.

Photography by DoNBrewerMultimedia Photography.