light beings (May & Andy), DoN Brewer, digital photograph.
The Coffee Bar at The Radisson Warwick Hotel @ 17th & Locust Streets in Philly is spotlighting fourteen photographs from DoN’s series titled “light beings“, February 26th through July 30th, 2010. Strictly landscape, the images of reflections on urban surfaces seem mysterious or manipulated, the photographs evoke thoughts of what we may become - beings of light traveling at unimaginable speeds in all directions of the universe at once.
DoN was contacted by Amy Potsic of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists inquiring if he could mount a one person show with only two weeks notice? Duh? Amy and Ann Koivunen selected 14 images out of twenty-two, Rob Stauffer helped DoN with framing, custom mats & non-glare glass, Shoshka, Aldy & Les helped install the show - art is hard work, man! You have to know math!?! The Coffee Bar space is fabu, good light, great Einstein coffee, yummy food and it’s a bar at night! How cool is that?
Lilliana Didovic LoVeS Philly! DoN inquired what the Best of 5 means? The artist explained the hidden, deeper enigma of the number 5 - 16 years ago when her son Gordon was only 5 he had a liver transplant, on the same date 5 years ago (both happened on her birthday, February 23), he had an emergency surgery-open trache in order to be on ventilator and doctors put him in induced coma. Iimagine you must trust the expertise of others to heal the one you love. Five years ago just that happened to Lilliana, the doctors and hospitals in Philly came through for her family with futuristic expertise, Gordon is in his early twenties now. A miracle. While she handed the life of her son over to the doctors, Lilliana returned to painting, a skill she practiced in her former home in Sarajevo-Bosnia. She and her husband escaped from the war there in the 90s and emigrated to the US with their young son, painting was not a priority but suddenly art returned to her world and helped heal her during the unimaginably stressful process which began five years ago.
Now she paints because she loves it, producing exuberant modernist paintings in a style which is recognizably Lilliana, DoN knows people who collect Didovic’s art cards, frame them and give as gifts - DoN LoVeS steal-able art ideas.
Lilliana Didovic @ Smile Gallery on 22nd Street.
Red Untitled II, acrylic on canvas, Lilliana Didovic.
5 is fabulous! Bold color, iconic imagery, glittering sparkles and energetic compositions represent love, hope and power, Lilliana’s art transmits happy peacefulness with a touch of rock n’ roll wildness not moribund hopelessness. Didovic lives in the moment, her 2010 paintings are heroic in scale, molten color fields in cool blues and hot reds hung in pairs, one wall is covered with a zillion miniature city-scapes with glimmering crystals representing the lights of our great city. The gallery @ Smile on 22nd St. is a great showcase for Didovic’s five year time trip though love, life and the pursuit of happiness. Lilliana LoVeS Philly - Back at ya, Girl!
Trina Mansfield is a multi-media artist working primarily in fabrics but she also takes the photographs, plots the designs on the computer then pieces together elaborate “quilts”.
Trina Mansfield’s labels for her exhibition @ The Cosmopolitan Club are truly exceptional - hand-written notes in pencil with tiny sketches like getting a nice letter from a friend.
DoN LoVeS quilts and fabric art (he watches all those geeky sewing shows on TV), maybe because there’s an emotional link to Grandma’s crazy quilts from childhood. Mansfield’s quilts are painterly and impressionistic, even though the concept is based on crazy quilts these designs are exceptionally lucid and lush with witty contrasts and meticulous details.
When DoN entered the Cosmopolitan Club on Latimer Street to see the Karl Olsen exhibit the first thing he did was take his hat off, it’s that kind of place. Quiet and plush it feels like a set from a Ginger Rogers movie with soft tones, tufted fabrics and multi-tiered rooms and a reception area where DoN pictured a Judy Holiday type answering the phone, “Good Evening, Cosmopolitan Club.” The historic space is the perfect space to show Karl Olsen’s metropolitan style, artistic swagger and consummate artistry.
The gallery walls in the Cosmopolitan Club are 20′ long panels framed with moulding, a chic presentation space for ongoing exhibits of fine art. Currently Karl Olsen is showing a selection of art works from his vast stash of images created in various media from lino-cut prints to paintings to pastels, each piece special since Karl had to winnow out a group which is representative of his style with drawings, paintings and prints. Olsen is a role model for DoN with his dedication to proficiency to many modes of communication through image making; sometimes Karl will contentedly draw quick figure studies in linoleum block with sharp tools next he’s scrawling broad swathes of color with soft pastels on huge sheets of fine paper then perhaps a wet, juicy painting always with an eye on finding an image he believes signifies his vision of art.
Karl Olsen @ The Cosmopolitan Club.
DoN loves watching Karl Olsen work, he is very intense and focused on creating movement, emotional contact, energetic mark-making, lucid dream states - you can watch him drift off into an alpha state and let the universal energy pass through him onto the surface. Olsen monitors workshops @ The Plastic Club and until recently held weekly gatherings at his own studio but Olsen is taking time now to do his own thing and the result is really innovative, exciting art evocative of another era yet really cool and contemporary.
Karl Olsen, Olga, oil on panel @ The Cosmopolitan Club. DoN has been in the presence of Olga before, she always makes a powerful impact on a room, but at the Cosmopolitan Club, a proper woman’s club of high esteem, Olga is able to fully express the story of an artist’s struggle to a achieve a level of virtuosity she knew the painter held all along. Olga represents modern sensibilities with bold color and urgent brushwork yet feels timeless with an impressionist style time-tripping to centuries passed.
The Mysterious Distance Between Men of Means, Jed Mauger Williams @ 2424 York Street.
Jed Mauger Williams paintings are in the antechamber of2424 York Street, the location of the immense Skybox Gallery. Williams is showing ten works based on themes of his quest for the human figure, pop & mythological and different forms of spirituality. Manipulating symbols, assigning them spectacular color, signifying icons with saturated layers of various media in tumultuous abandon, Jed makes extraordinary images that are extravagantly engaging. Even his presentation was deliberately skewed, absurd and charged with a weird cultural angst like some retrofitted beat/pop/rap artist from the past, maybe Paris or Philly, quirky yet hip, kind of ugly beautiful and strange.
Jed M. Williams - semi-abstract pop images seethe with multiple personalities, modern memes & contemporary style. Williams’ gallery & studio is @ 6th & Bainbridge but DoN loves how ballsy Jed was in working his way into the hot new art center in Fishtown.
Greeting From My Home Planet, Jed Williams.
Pop references and graffiti vibes permeate Williams’ paintings yet a darker narrative creates disturbance and tension. One day DoN picked Jed up @ The PMA, he had a friend deliver returned art work to the gift shop for him to pick up, this way his work was inside the museum like Ray Johnson mailing art to MOMA because he knew they cataloged everything.
Ed Bronstein is an artist member of Gallery 22 owned & curated by Shawn Murray and is probably Philly’s most prolific plein air artist. It’s a wonder he gets any painting done though, since he is so gregarious and popular that when he’s painting outdoors people (DoN included) stop to talk. The collection of 46 paintings at Gallery 22 attests to Ed’s drive to get the job done; many of the paintings are totally plein air but some, like the dog paintings, are completed in the studio. Bronstein sometimes also works from memory in the studio after beginning a painting in the field, he is so familiar with the territory he could probably create a Philly scene with no reference material at all.
Ed Bronstein @ Gallery 22. Ed told DoN that usually he has to paint the doggie portraits from photographs since as we know dogs don’t stay still for very long, even when they’re sleeping. Ed captured many of these dog images at the Schuykill River Park also known as the dog socialization area - one of KaTy the ArT Dog & Lady Doofie’s favorite spots to hang out.
Scenes of Philadelphia by Ed Bronstein @ Gallery 22. DoN recognized the view from Bartram’s Garden in the lower painting since he sat in the same spot but tried to paint out the oil tanks, focusing on the trees. Bronstein saw the sculptural beauty and urban aesthetic of the oil tanks and captured the scene with bold color and swift brush strokes.
Ed Bronstein started this painting in Fitler Square but then worked on it for months in the studio. Libby Rosoff of The Art Blog commented on how hot the colors are compared to the plein air works. Ed will be having a meet and greet in the gallery soon, check their website for dates & time.
The Icebox @ Crane Arts Center in Fishtown is an enormous white, cavernous space with high walls and no columns, it actually used to be a huge refrigerator. Now it’s one of the premier art spaces in Philadelphia and through 11/22 will be hosting “40,000 Feet” by Su Tomesen, five huge projections of clouds viewed from an airplane with mist drifting across the floor and the low hum of jets, bleeps and bloops of seat-belt signs and the grind of lowering landing gear. The effect is that of the perfect flight, the magic of riding high in the sky finally restored without having to take off your shoes.
Su explained to DoN there are several variables: time, movement, imperfection and the human hand. The movie is not perfect, it’s not shot with five movie cameras somehow suspended from the underside of a plane, it’s the same clip playing at five different intervals. But the illusion of clouds drifting endlessly by is mesmerizing like flying on a magic carpet with the mist drifting through room creating a veil of mystery. Tomesen is thrilled with the space, the show previously was exhibited in a restaurant in Amsterdam above a row of windows abbreviating some of the magic.
40,000 Feet time-warped DoN back to cloud-watching with Grandma, looking for animals and faces in the sky while lying on the ground, only this time the view is from Heaven.
There is an artist reception Wednesday, 11/18 @ Crane Arts, 1400 American Street.
When DoN introduced himself to Treacy Ziegler he immediately put foot in mouth by gushing, “I love your frames“. Ack! But Ziegler actually begins her process by outlining the canvas with black tape in anticipation of placing the finished work in an appropriately unobtrusive frame which highlights the painting yet is an interesting construction, simultaneously decorative, efficient and subdued. Treacy trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as a print-maker but changed direction to painting which explains the careful composition of each work of art. The sense of light and space is reminiscent of Edward Hopper (a DoN fave) and Zeigler admits he’s an influence since his style is recognizably American. Treacy actually produces her own paints combining pigments and oils to develop just the right consistency, not fond of brush strokes she thinks of the brushwork as color, turning texture into design, stretching the stokes like fluid creating subtle transparent reflective light.
Treacy Ziegler @ F.A.N Gallery.
Treacy Ziegler @ F.A.N. Gallery. DoN thinks this is a great idea to steal with small round canvases inserted into cutouts in simple squares of black wood. Good artists copy, great artists steal!
“Fire Dance, Ubud Bali, Indonesia“, Daniel Reilly @ Bonte’s, 130 S. 17th, Philadelphia.
World traveler, photographer Daniel Reilly’s current one-person show @ Bonte’s Cafe, 17th & Walnut, offers unique vistas, alluring compositions, mysterious visions and one-of-a-kind perspectives that only an artist could see - all in pristine black & white and color photos. Each photograph is a glimpse into a part of the world that many of us may never experience - from a birds eye view of Argentine street Tango dancers to haunting groundhog views of the ancient Greek Parthenon to quirky over the shoulder shots of Tibetan monks passing a can of Coke. A native Philadelphian, Reilly taught English in Buenos Aires for more than three years - the locals wanted to learn American slang such as, “Stop busting my balls!” - ah, pop culture’s influence, who knew? Daniel was a witness to the 2002 riot at the Pink Palace, he actually ran towards the scene after grabbing his camera only to high-tail it away when police on horseback came rushing towards him.
In San Francisco Reilly worked for a TV station, then spent nine months in Hawaii, on to the islands of Fiji, a tour of New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Indonesia, Lombak, Gili Islands, Singapore, Bangkok Thailand, Athens Greece - Reilly spent two years in Summer! Daniel told DoN the best time of his life was spent in Croatia. But, Reilly always come home to family in Philly. A recent member of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the show at Bonte’s is one of Daniel’s first one-person shows even though he’s been an event photographer for years with a catalog of over 30,000 images. Maybe that’s why the selection of pictures @ Bonte’s are so choice - some of the archivally matted and framed prints have already sold; DoN suggests you start to collect Reilly now before the prices go up.
Daniel Reilly, “Untitled, Rio de la Plata, Uraguay.”
“T is for Tango, Buenos Aires, Argentina”, Daniel Reilly, PSoP photographer @ Bonte’s.
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