Rob Lybeck, Abstract and Ornamentations at Black n Brew
Read DoN‘s interview with photographer Rob Lybeck at the new DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog.
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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
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
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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House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections
Renny Molenaar‘s solo show at House Gallery is mind-blowing, DoN asked the artist about the installation, “I’m a compulsive collector. All of the pieces in the show are inspired by repetition of color. I was playing with the Puerto Rican artist Miguel Pinero, the book Short Eyes
House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections
“I was living in the South Bronx and I had just read Langston Hughes, where he’s talking about heroin pussy, this is crack pussy, and I was doing rainbows with them and I started noticing garbage becomes a narrative, garbage becomes a story. So I started collecting garbage that attracted me, that told a story…I became very attracted to things that have color. Or I added color, so I did a show in Maine and I did an installation of rocks covered in fabric, just to experiment, it was funny. I came back to New York, and I was invited to do a show ‘at a gallery’ and I wanted more rocks.”
“So I’m in the South Bronx and I tried to look for rocks and there is no rocks in the South Bronx. So, I found crack vials, I found mufflers, the mufflers are on top of the piano. This is terrible. That’s where the mufflers come up…they’re more common in the street than rocks. So I covered them in different colored fabric.”
House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections
House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections
Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections is disturbing and amazing with works made from crack lighters, crack bags and vials, found objects and fabric-bombed car mufflers leaving the question of the complicity of the petro-chemical industry in the distribution of drugs in the city all in a sweet rainbow of seductive color.
House Gallery, 1816 Frankfort Ave., Philadelphia PA.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer
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John Styner, Kerovac, digital painting, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
As a little DoNster, DoN dreamed of becoming an abstract artist. Stop reading if you’ve heard this story before but when Donnie was in the second grade he announced one evening at dinner he wanted to be an abstract artist when he grew up. Life magazine wrote about Jackson Pollack with color pictures of the wild action paintings seemingly anyone could do, Maynard G. Krebs was a beatnik icon on TV and American in Paris was a dream life-style for an artsy little boy. DoN‘s parents were appalled.
Kenneth Weiner, Quarks, acrylic, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
Abstract art is popular and accessible because it takes elements of reality and transforms them into something new allowing the viewer to see and feel whatever the image is transmitting. A mid twentieth century invention, abstraction is now everywhere in modern culture, how then do artists invigorate the style. Kenneth Weiner‘s Quarks layers colors in deep tones and lifts up through complementary films of washed on tones interjected with slashes of fire red in animistic actions and impressionistic light. This style of painting is recognizable as abstract yet has a narrative explained in color.
Su Knoll Horty, Deception in Pink, oil on canvas, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
Alan Fetterman, Area, oil, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
The Absolutely Abstract 2012 show represents a particular vision of the state of the art of abstraction in The Philadelphia region, a school of thought that permeates the show with many styles, techniques and media. Alan Fetterman‘s dense layers of color and multiple dimensions reads like a compendium of thought on the once controversial now ubiquitous style, easily drawing the viewer into an imaginary world where paint can do anything. The mastery of paint and brushwork, the illusory landscape, surreal dreamscapes still inspires the artistic memories of a little boy who wanted to grow up to be an abstract artist.
Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club – click the thumbnail
Look Mom & Dad! Little Donnie grew up to be an abstract artist after all. light being (Frank) appears to be the only photograph in the show, it is an honor to once again be included with the fantastical abstract paintings filling the historic gallery at The Philadelphia Sketch Club.
The artist reception and awards ceremony is Sunday, September 9th, 2012, 2:00-4:00pm, 235 South Camac Street, Philadelphia, The Avenue of the Artists.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer
Reborn/Reconfigured Rosalind Bloom Paintings and Works on Paper
Reborn/Reconfigured Rosalind Bloom Paintings and Works on Paper
Rosalind Bloom describes the title and theme of her show Reborn/Reconfigured this way, “All of the pieces are made from pre-existing bits of this and that. That either belongs to work that I triaged out of inventory or found material that I have saved thinking that I would use at some point. That includes fireplace ash, dried leaves, some of the pieces I stained with tea…so it’s all things that existed in the world in one form and I’ve transformed, they’ve been reborn as something else, into a new life.”
Reborn/Reconfigured Rosalind Bloom Paintings and Works on Paper
“They are the parts of old paintings, for me it’s always been about transformation and how things change from one state to another. I’ve gone back to what was my way of working for many, many years where I don’t have an over-riding concept or narrative, I’m allowing myself to just play. Each piece becomes whatever it wants to become.”
Roz continues, “The two series that came before this series, there was a theme, a narrative, a concept that kind of dictated the way things would go. I didn’t do that this time…I have given myself permission to just let it be, to play and whatever happens, happens.”
Reborn/Reconfigured Rosalind Bloom Paintings and Works on Paper at Da Vinci Art Alliance Gallery, 704 Catharine Street, Philadelphia, PA – click here for dates and hours.
Written and photographed by DoN Brewer