Category Archives: 110 Church

RiTUAL Reading Room

My Winter Coat, Barbara Henry, NJ and A Summer Morning’s Ritual, Pia De Girolamo

RiTUAL, Reading Room, 110 Church Gallery, 110 Church Street, Philadelphia PA 19106, 267 871 9375, HOURS: Thursday 1:30 – 6:30 pm, Friday 1:30 – 6:30 pm (except First Fridays, 5 – 8 pm) Saturday Noon – 4:00 pm, other times by appointment.

ARTIST RECEPTION:  Saturday, December 14, 2013,  3:00 – 6:00 pm

110 Church Gallery invites you to retreat from the cold into our gallery, transformed into a reading room. Be surrounded by stories, engulfed by pages, dazzled by over two hundred books. Books on shelves. Books on tables. Books hanging. Walls covered with books on display. Take books down, curl up and read. Fall in love with a book, buy it, and take it home.

Each of these books has been constructed from a single-sheet surface that is no larger than 11 x 17 inches. Over one hundred artists submitted books, addressing the theme: ritual.

RiTUAL, Reading Room, 110 Church Gallery

RiTUAL Reading Room is a meme based in Social Practice. To get the idea out into the Philadelphia art scene and have participation, the message had to be simple, easy to explain and memorably fun. By adding terms and conditions the curators established a concept that artists could share with each other, all you had to do was follow simple instructions. Making books in the Age of Digital Reproduction is a challenge to artists desiring to express themselves on paper. RiTUALS let’s the artist write whatever kind of book they like and then share the wall space with other artists, their work pixelated into the matrix of the meme, each book like a nerve connecting to the central nervous system of the art show. It really makes you think.

The design is simple and elegant with each book, loaded with information, waits to be unpacked by a viewer. Action is required to view the books displayed artfully in clear bags, concise tagging and information design creates a clever design experience. At the First Friday opening people ‘reading’ the books in random order mostly said, ‘Cool!’ There’s no better word.

110 Church Gallery, RiTUAL, Reading Room

RiTUAL as a social practice experience is intellectually satisfying from the ad campaign with the sample instruction books to the on-line campaign to the virtual display, the idea is to express a concept within constraints. The books nearest the door are hung from display pins so the wind won’t blow them over, object-like books such as the tea-bag book are on pedestals and tables and the rest are displayed on slim racks with taut string keeping them in place.

The origami-like fold of the paper creates a four page book, with 8 sides and the opposite side of the paper can be a poster. There are books of prints, poems, recipes, photos, patterns, drawings, paintings, embroidery and sculpture. And there are stories told in eight pages that will make you laugh or cry. The tactility of handing the books and sharing the discoveries with others opened up communications so that people interacted instead of the anonymity of the library.

110 Church Gallery, RiTUAL, Reading Room

RiTUAL creates an environment saturated with information, ideas and design. The cable knit sweater book by Kate Flake is an expression of the information technology of sewing communicated as memetic code. A meme of cozy comfort is translated into the book in a language different from words; a thread of thought creates a story in an un-named tongue that is easily understood and re-interpretted into words.

110 Church Gallery, RiTUAL, Reading Room

Pia DeGirolamo’s books are delightfully informative and rich with style and taste. And by taste I mean food. Tomato Sauce Ritual teaches how to be resourceful and make yourself some decent Italian food; you live in Philly you should know how to make sauce. The illustrations, text and paper all add to the narrative in ways that are visually tasty.

110 Church Gallery, RiTUAL, Reading Room

Thank you to Stella and Margaret from 110 Church Gallery for taking up this idea that involves depending on a lot of artists to create something new and making the exhibition a reality. The show has hundreds of books, there is an on-line catalog with pages about the artists and their books. RiTUAL is a lot of information that required deep thought and attention to detail to make happen.

110 Church Gallery consistently presents art that is thought provoking and unique, with RiTUAL the curators have communicated with the arts community in a way that they responded to with exciting and beautiful concepts of their own. Creating a spirit of community is the essence of the art show and if you spend time reading the books in the gallery you will learn about the people of our community and their rituals.

RiTUAL online catalog

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer except where noted.

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RiTUAL

Cairo

365 #drawingaday: Stella Untalan at 110 Church Gallery

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

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Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery, Out of the Well, woodcut on Japanese paper

Have you ever experienced that magic moment with a work of art when it changes from one thing to another? Like when an abstract becomes a landscape, or a figure emerges from a mess of paint? Expect that to happen when you visit Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery. What looks like a drawing is a woodcut, what looks 2D is 3D, what appears abstract actually has a distinct narrative. The gallery on Church Street in Old City presents the artist’s work sparely, each piece or grouping has plenty of elbow room yet the space is entirely activated by the artist’s conceptual prints. Out of the Well reads like an abstract drawing from across the room but when approached the distinct markings of gouged wood become apparent and the sense of looking down a deep well and not tree rings comes into view. Rebecca Gilbert‘s art always takes the viewer on a journey to a strange place with an odd sense of the familiar. Have you ever looked down a well? Or even seen a real well?

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

The triptych above looks at first like a crumbled pediment then transmogrifies into a skateboard ramp over a dirt pile. The static work becomes action packed with the handiwork of kids setting up a dare-devil jump for bikes; the seemingly flat surface is actually layers of dimpled board built up thickly and hanging away from the wall. Again the sweet moment of change, a dual reality of simple forms switch from abstract to story-telling illustration. Remember these are prints, not drawings or paintings, and more sculptural than flat.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

Artist Dan Chow, like many others, moved up so close to the installation that a museum guard would drag you back. Thoughtfully, he covered his mouth so as not to breath onto the delicate surface to inspect the incredible detail and peek behind the sides to discover how the work floats away from the wall. Rebecca Gilbert told DoN she wanted to make a big Evil Knievle sized jump but settled for the fun sized kid version. But again, it’s the story of riding a bike really fast and making the jump over a dirt pile like an imaginary row of trucks on a Harley Fat Boy that creates action in the art.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

The trio of woodcuts in white frames is peaceful like sitting by a pond, the watery blue ripples out like the waves from a thrown pebble. Insect and plant forms linger near the edges. You can almost hear the breeze rustling leaves and croaking frogs. Again, the images aren’t flat, layers of prints are built up in an elegant merging of amorphous shapes to delight the eye and bring wonderment to the mind.

Rebecca Gilbert is a CFEVA Fellow, her communications skills are awesome. She speaks with clarity and has stories to tell about each piece with explanations for the symbolism she incorporates in her art. And when you know the stories then the mark-making, line and color take on a richer quality saturated with colorful myths, amusing anecdotes and flights of fancy. Printmaking is a challenging art form requiring multiple skills such as drawing, sculpting and mechanical mastery, the show of prints, Shine: Rebecca Gilbert, will expand your mind and improve your knowledge of what a print can be in the age of mechanical reproduction.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

DoN had the pleasure of interviewing Rebecca Gilbert in her new studio on the second floor of Da Vinci Art Alliance in South Philly during Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2012 and will post more information about her process and the many projects she is juggling while hammering, gouging and slicing away at a plank of wood, creating the reverse image of what you see in the final print. Amazing.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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