DoNArTNeWs

light being (Diana), DoN Brewer, digital photograph.

light being (Carl Sagan), DoNBrewerMultimedia Photography @ The Radisson Warwick Hotel, The Coffee Bar.

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?

Artist Reception: April 7, 2010, 5-7PM.

Photos by DoNBrewerMultimedia Photography.

4th Generation, Janelle Adamska, acrylic scrim/screenprint and burn-out.  Janelle told DoN she uses a wood burning tool to burn out the negative space of the design totally time-tripping DoN back to the old Sears Dream Book with the cool wood-burning tools, remember the smell?  The artist fell in love with a borrowed tool so a friend gave her one of her own, Adamska’s scene-stealing piece sure isn’t like drawing a horse head into a piece of pine.

Tic-Tac-Toe, Beverly Godfrey, tapestry, 2009.

Text, Leslie Haas, paper.  This simple paper construct is such a great meme with little scrolls stuffed in a box like memories of futures passed crammed with lots of overlapping narratives and keepsakes.  Sweet.

Margin Notes, Pat depaula Klein, hand stitched with cotton floss.

Sorry, DoN doesn’t have the artist’s name for these super-kawaii postcards like old fashioned pot holders with stitched cliche’ greetings.

Pondering the Possibilities, Francine Strauss, quilted mixed media wall hanging.

Pop Can Patchwork, Caroline J. Maw-Dies, pop can labels, nails, wood in traditional patchwork/quilt/basket-weave pattern, 2009.  Like tramp art of old this collage of metal embodies that home-spun crazy quilt vibe of the DIY movement, instead of bottle top ropes or toothpick clocks Pop Can Patchwork is informed by invasive advertising and cultural collapse.  Maw-Dies represents the 21st Century Gleaner, recycling and re-purposing detritus into modern beauty and contemporary design.

Saturday evening Kathryn Pannepacker, curator of the TeXt/TeXtiLe, a Philagrafika event, held a pot luck dinner and movie party @ Da Vinci Art Alliance with a great turn out of artists, good food and chummy conversation.  The homey comfortable-ness of the event, lively with old and new friends, is sure to become a tradition - it’s a great way to get people to come see an art show.  The movie was about the current DIY scene across the country featuring artists working in art & crafts and “making a living” - DoN flashed back to December’s First Friday, it was freezing and wet out and 2nd Street had maybe a hundred kids trying to sell paintings, T-shirts, hats, fudge…while the movie was fast paced, very informative and offered insight into successful models for art business’, there’s still an underlying sense of a new kind of tactic to simply survive the Great Recession by one’s own means.

Today while walking KaTy the ArT DoG & Lady Doofus, the St. Bernard/Chihuahua mix, through Rittenhouse Square, DoN spotted a tree wearing a colorful crocheted legging - a secret crafter mafia tagging style with fiber instead of stickers or spray paint.  Obey!

Alice Meyer Wallace in the Down Stairs Members Gallery @ The Plastic Club.

Alice Meyer Wallace, Mina Smith-Segal, the photo is Bonnie Schorske’s are featured artists in the Members Gallery; the next five member artists to show in the delightful space were drawn from a hat by a small boy with an unusually large head during the awards ceremony for the current Small Worlds exhibition.

Bonnie Schorske, photographs in the Down Stairs Members Gallery @ The Plastic Club on the Avenue of the Artists.

The Plastic Club hosts the monthly Photographic Society of Philadelphia meetings, art-aholic Salons hosted by the inimitable Anders Hanson (Jody Sweitzer announced a joint Plastic Club/Sketch Club/Avenue of the Artists show @ Off the Wall Gallery in Dirty Frank’s Bar), daily workshops and Bob Jackson makes dinner the last Friday of the month for the starving artists who gather at the club to draw and paint.  The next show is a black and white theme - interesting.

Jessica Barber, Bonifacio, monotype/oil pastels @ Gallery Twenty-Two’s Making An Impression show featuring prints by Jessica Barber & Alison Altergott.  Prints is a bit of a misnomer in this show, both artists use printing as part of their process but expand the barriers into writing, drawing, collage and painting.  DoN LoVeS this print which looks very much like a Star Trek Ferengi.

DoN asked Jessica if she created this piece in Madrid because it feels so immediate and plein air, as if she set up her plates & inks right there in the cafe.  Actually the artist worked from a photo she took while on a trip to Alice’s annual painting retreat in Majorca with friends from the Plastic Club.  Jessica said club president, Bob Jackson allowed her to work late at night in the wonderful print shop “down stairs”, allowing her to create these rich, saturated images which she had framed at Liberty Art & Framing with non-glare glass.  Immediacy, tension and vitality exude from the paper with a fresh, active style only the rigorous lithograph process produces.

Jessica Barber explained to DoN she uses a new non-toxic form lithographic process using plastic sheets which the artist applies different resists for the ink, Jessica used non-conventional mark-making tools to develop her images including Sharpies, she said, “ink loves the donor”.

Jessica Barber @ the opening of her collaborative show @ Gallery Twenty-Two.  Second Friday for people in cars was frustratingly frantic, west Center City traffic was snarled because of the snow and the South Street bridge being out but DoN walked, easily strolling past cars with “Bad Romance” blasting in his iPod; Jessica was stuck on a bus trying to get to her own opening, arriving safely - fashionably late!

Alison Altergott @ Twenty-Two Gallery.  DoN asked about the girls in Alison’s prints, old dress patterns from the 50s & 20s because of the resonance of the strong feminine ideal of the home-maker.  DoN thought a feminist home-maker is a contradiction in terms but Alison defended the mystique as a commentary on what we’ve lost compared to the way families live now.  Alison Altergott combines handwriting, collage, paint and printing to develop these densely signified images about the ideals of growing up.

Alison Altergott, Heartstrings, 1 of 2 prints @ Gallery Twenty-Two.

Photos by DoNBrewerMultimedia Photography.

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!

Lilliana Didovic @ Smile Gallery.

Photography by DoNBrewerMultimedia.

Trina Mansfield, Eiffel Tower, quilted fabric collage @ The Cosmopolitan Club.

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.

Trina Mansfield @ The Cosmopolitan Club.

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.

On a cold, sunny early January afternoon, Miss Shirleen surprised Shoshka & DoN with tickets to The Barnes Foundation in Merion, PA.  Just a quick drive to the mansion from the plateau, the guards greeted us and pointed to a parking spot and soon we were wandering the fabulous rooms filled with French Impressionist masterworks, African sculptures and antiquities.

The main hall is the social hub with visitors absorbing and discussing in hushed tones the eccentric array of masterpieces.  Quickly splitting up, the three of us gravitated to lush Monet’s, an oddly hung Seurat or a small Cezanne and soon DoN found himself alone in a room with one of Van Gogh’s famous Postman portraits hung clumsily in the corner.  DoN moved in closer and closer, studying the brushwork, observing color-ways, admiring the pattern of the floral wallpaper in the background, the Postman’s eyes staring straight into DoN’s.  When DoN was about a foot from the painting he felt a tap on the shoulder, jumping like an armadillo, DoN was smilingly admonished by a pretty guard, he had wandered over the black electric tape line, the only barrier between DoN & Vincent.

After about ten minutes a few more visitors joined DoN so he moved on to the next gallery and again had one-on-one time with an Heironymus Bosch, it seems unreal that such an iconic object is so accessible, the phantasmagoria playing out across the canvas like a fever dream.  There’s a Soutine which DoN used to think was ugly and seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room but over time the skewed, garish sailor boy has transmuted into a signification of the meaning of painting.  Toulous Lautrec’s “A Montrouge” is so incredibly beautiful that everything else in the room becomes a supporting player.

DoN doesn’t understand why the Barnes is moving to the Parkway even though it will be within walking distance for many more people.  The commute to the current location is simple, the wacko presentation of art & utilitarian craft in a Main Line mansion is a unique experience and, oh yeah, it breaks Barnes’ last will & testament, beside the fact that the place was practically empty on a Saturday afternoon.  Is there really an audience for the quirky mix of art & industry removed from it’s original locale?  DoN recommends you schedule your visit asap - it’s a trip.

P. J. Smalley, Girl on Toilet, oil/digital print @ The Plastic Club.

Donna P. Collins, Our Love Dissolved, photograph.

Donna P. Collins, One Way Out, photograph.

Julianna Struck, Untitled, oil @ The Plastic Club New Members Exhibition 2010.

Karen Frank, Effervesence, acrylic.

New Member Exhibition 2010 @ The Plastic Club.  Corel Topel, Baby #1, pen & ink, Armand Scavo, 101 Walnut Street #1, photograph and Karen Freeman, Modiglianni Girl, ink.

Serena Perrone, Dreaming of Flying Fish, oil/charcoal/graphite.

Welcome to the 24 new members of the Plastic Club; the current show is super-strong with technical virtuosity, broad variety of styles, big personalities and aspirational contemporary ideas from established and new members of the Philly Art Community.

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.

Karl Olsen @ The Cosmopolitan Club.

This year DoN got to know Dr. Deb Miller of the Da Vinci Art Alliance; Miller is a driving force behind the production of themed art shows for the gallery at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, Smile Gallery, Bartram’s Garden Gallery, the Black Box Gallery @ The Lantern Theater and more.  This year art exhibits included Envisioning Hamlet, Darwin & Carnivorous Plants, Windows on the World, Heroines & Harlots.. collaborations with The Lantern Theater, Bartrams Garden, Smile Gallery & more.  As a result of these concept shows DoN won more awards for art this year than in all previous years of entering shows.  Dr. Deb always takes an extra moment to praise the artist when presenting awards, tells an anecdote about the work, shares tidbits about her life in Andy Warhol’s circle and makes sure all the artists even though they may not win anything, feel special, that it’s worth all the time & effort to produce art.  Twice, Dr. Deb has whispered in DoN’s ear during award ceremonies that she thought he should have won first prize instead of honorable mention - DoN bets Dr. Debbie says that to all the boys.

On the move - Dr. Miller makes sure the audience moves through the gallery and presents awards by the art work instead of from a fixed spot as many other juried shows do.  Her gregarious banter and knowledgeable comments always are educational, informative and frank.

Dr. Deb Miller @ Bartram’s Garden Gallery.

DoN in awe of Dr. Deb’s comments on his “Botanical Print” @ Bartram’s Garden Gallery.  Actually, Dr. Deb always makes sure DoN say a few words about his work and she always gets jurors to speak about their decisions.

Dr. Debra Miller, Liz Niklus, Alden Cole, David Foss & Ona Kalstein @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.  The board at the Da Vinci Art Alliance performs an essential function in the Philly art community, providing a creative outlet, a great social network and a vibrant array of shows, lectures and parties.

Dr. Deb Miller presenting DoN with an award for his digital photograph called, Denmark, for the Envisioning Hamlet Show @ The Black Box Gallery in the Lantern Theater.  DoN recently eves-dropped David Foss and heard there will be continuing collaborations with the Lantern Theater and the International Opera Theater - coolness!

Dr. Debra Miller gives a great lecture about Andy Warhol, here she’s presenting her talk @ The Fleisher Art Memorial.

Philly Art Stars @ the Windows on the World opening @ Smile Gallery.  That’s the back of Liz Niklus‘ head, Dr. Deb, Lilliana Didovic & Betsy Alexander, that was a great show, in fact the three winners are having their show at the gallery next month.

Photographer Jon Naar with Dr. Debra @ Photosynthesis 2008 @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.

Thanks to Dr. Debra Miller and the entire board of the Da Vinci Art Alliance for providing such an outstanding platform for artists to exercise their creative muscles.  DoN can’t wait to see what 2010 has in store at the venerable art alliance.