DoNArTNeWs

Through My Window, Da Vinci Art Alliance Members Traveling Art Show now in Millville, NJ Arts District in the Riverfront Renaissance Center for the Arts through 7 - 10 -2010

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.

Ona Kalstein, Through My Window @ Riverfront Renaissance Center for the Arts.

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!

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.

Robert Bohne, Seated Nude, gouache/pencil @ The Plastic Club 2010 Worksop Show.

Paul Clement, Dryad, watercolor.

Barbara Fleming, Solitude, photograph, Syd Torchio, Untitled, acrylic & DoN Brewer, Homme Debout, charcoal & chalk.

Drawings in the Workshop Show @ The Plastic Club by Don McPartland, DoN Brewer & Mike Roberson.

DoN Brewer, La Bella Blonde, charcoal & chalk, Greg Lewis, Untitled, ballpoint, Don McPartland, Untitled, mixed media & Alden Cole, Untitled, oil.

 The Workshop Show @ The Plastic Club embraces art of all kinds as long as the piece relates to work done in one of the many workshops held throughout the week in the Studio on the 2nd floor.  Friday night is DoN’s favorite workshop; dedicated artists drag their tired asses up to the studio to draw, paint, etch, collage, drink wine…and the last Friday of the month, President Bob makes dinner.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.

Grotesque Profile / Dean’s Song, Michael DiPrinzio @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.

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.

Learn more about the DiPrinzio family project @ the Da Vinci Art Alliance website including info on Daniel DiPrinzio’s novel, “New U“.

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.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.com

Coulter Watt, A Bag of Fun, oil on board @ Newman Galleries on Walnut Street.

Newman Galleries is the 2nd oldest continuously family owned art gallery in America, the collection the Newman family has amassed is amazing.  Terry Newman is hosting a holiday art sale, offering terrific deals on paintings; DoN began dreaming of decorating an awesome beach house or a glamorous new condo with the perfectly eclectic work of art to match with decor - there is so much to look at, it’s hard to imagine what to put where.  Terry suggests trying taking favorites home on a trial basis to find that perfect piece that expresses your lifestyle, their website has a fantastic database to explore.

Abraham P. Hankins, Picture on a Blackboard, oil on canvas.  The third floor gallery is a cool respite from the street filled with desirable works of art.  Newman Gallery will be hosting The Philadelphia Sketch Club’s Annual Member’s Exhibition June 12th, 2010.

Ethel F. Betts Bains, House and Garden, 1923, oil on canvas, @ Newman Galleries.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.

Valerie Carroll, Spot @ Twenty-Two Gallery.

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.

Adrienne Jenkins, Jamie, oil on canvas @ 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.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.

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.

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.

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.