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Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance

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Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Allianc

Michelle Post‘s show of carvings are unusual and beautiful, they look like cast sculptures but they are actually carved from styrofoam. The illusion of heaviness is ironic because of the texture on the outside. Some people think the busts are made from paper mache, the plinths are actually blocks of styrofoam. When the artist grabs a head to show the plinth it’s startling because they look so heavy but are as light as air. Michelle Post explained, “They’re in banged up beat up condition when I get them because they’re cast offs. And they can be in pretty deplorable shape. Gouges and hunks missing out of it but I like that. And I incorporate it into the piece.”

The sense of authenticity is uncanny. “Styrofoam is not normally a sculptural material, it is in the trade, however. Especially for enlargements like the MGM Grand lions out in Las Vegas. They’re cut in styrofoam and coated with material that’s very hard. The cost to have had those cast would have just been astronomical. There are companies now who take your maquette or your sculpture they scan it into a computer and then they have machines cut it out of a large block of foam. Now, you can do a lot of things with it afterward, you can mold it and cast it in bronze or aluminum or whatever or you can actually use the styrofoam.”

Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance

“For me, I work into the foam directly but it can’t go outside right now. So, these ten pieces here, the heads, are the commission for the Grounds for Sculpture. It’s so great. It kind of grew from eight heads to ten heads. The Sculpture Foundation commissioned it, it’s going to be a permanent installation at the Grounds for Sculpture around the amphitheater. The amphitheater has all these stone seatings that go up this gentle incline and so these guys are going to flank all the stone seating. It’s like they’re watching what’s going on down in the amphitheater.”

“They will be cast in aluminum and painted in my style but not necessarily these colors because they’re going to be treated as a whole. All ten pieces are one piece. They’re just a little bigger than life size.” DoN asked how she was awarded the commission? “Well, that’s sort of a hard one because I’ve seen a lot of former atelier people that have commissions there so I said, ‘Hey, what about me?’ But, what I was doing before wasn’t good enough to be put outdoors. I actually met Mr. Johnson and showed him my work. I like showing him my work. And when he saw these, I had seven of these heads done, and he went just like, ‘Oh my God, this is exactly what I’m looking for!’ and I went, ‘No! Get out of here!'”

J. Seward Johnson II is the founder of Grounds for Sculpture near Trenton NJ, a large sculpture park and he is also a well known sculptor himself specializing in trompe l’oeil painted bronze statues. He said yes to Michelle Post‘s idea to fulfill his idea of contemporary sculpture of portrait busts without being antiquity style. “He calls the the Mucky Mucks with Bruno as the head Mucky Muck and all the others in a hierarchy.” The work will be installed at Grounds for Sculpture in late 2013 after being sent off to be cast. “This is starting to expand how I see these heads now that they’re being put into a narrative.”

Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance

Sculptor Michelle Post explained to DoNArTNeWs the concept of her new work Post Industrial, a mixed media sculpture of a goat pulling a cart with a man, a woman and a blue dog. “The cart is actually a real cart, an antique back from the turn of the century (20th) and the goat is actually reminiscent of that time period. They did have goat carts. They would hook up the goat, put the kids in there because the kids were too tiny to do horse and buggy, so the goat was perfect. This piece came about because my husband says,’Michelle you’ve got that cart. You better do something with it.'”

“The heads were the perfect thing, I just piled a bunch of heads in there and do a goat which now is something different I’m bringing to these pieces. Before it would be just the heads. And the plinths which would be the bodies; the plinths become part of the sculpture so it’s not a pedestal piece. With the goat even the base becomes it’s little foot, if you will. The goat set a whole new set of things to figure out. I’m used to going vertical and goats are horizontal. With legs you can’t just put a big old body down, a plinth, and have it represent the body because, well, it’s different.”

Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance

Referring to the busts Michelle is known for she explains, “These guys are done all in one shot and I’ll work on ten to twelve pieces at one time.” You should know the artist has a magnificent octogonal shaped studio on her property near Millville, NJ big enough to build the heroic sized sculptures. “And about ten of them will turn out OK, there’s going to be a couple that are rejects, it just happens that way. And when Post Industrial came around I thought to myself, ‘OK. I’m bringing in something else.’ I do the stand alone pieces but now it’s time to do something different. With the busts they actually get named afterwards, when I’m carving it’s what comes out.”

DoN noticed that there was more of a narrative than just the personality of the busts; the sculpture reminds him of William Faulkner’s book Light in August where the young girl travels in a cart across the country in search of the father of her unborn child. Michelle said, “My husband, Dave, makes up all sorts of stories about it like, ‘Why’s the dog riding in the cart? Shouldn’t he be running along side?’ And they all have names, this is Cuthbert J. Twillie. If you’re an old movie fan you will know who he is. Think of, ‘My Little Chickadee.’ This is Sadie Twillie in the back, she doesn’t like it back there and that is Blue. Blue Twillie. And the goat is Willie. Willie Twillie.”

Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance ends this weekend, 10/28/2012 with a Halloween costume party in the gallery from 2:00 – 5:00pm. 704 Catharine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Tronies: Michelle Post at Da Vinci Art Alliance is one of the last new stories for this blog, www.brewermultimedia.com, as a new improved format is developed with larger images and better search engine optimization. Thank you to all the fans of DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog for your continued support. Subscribe to the new DoNArTNeWs.com by e-mail: DoN@DoNBrewerMultimedia.com

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Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

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Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

October 13th, 2012 artist Hiro Sakaguchi presented an artist talk to a crowd of art enthusiasts at Seraphin Gallery on Pine Street. DoN exerpted and transposed some of the lecture as best as he could.

“This photo was 2011, I think it’s after everything happened in Japan, the tsunami and everything. I had the chance to go to New Hampshire and had the chance to view this mountain. But for me I wasn’t thinking about the mountain, looking at the horizon line, like everybody else, when you have this kind of landscape in front of you. For me, I thought about the tsunami, the tragedy you know and I started thinking about it. So this is the feeling I got on the top of the mountain when I was thinking about my native country, I know what people are thinking about, it’s very meditative that way. This was the first thing I was thinking about and it starts from here. It’s how it started in my head, every artwork. ”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“Let’s start with drawing here. This drawing is called Flower Happening and as you see, there’s an image of an airplane. I think because of the apocalypse thinking in my head, documentary movies about war, natural disasters type of movies, so, one movie showed airplanes carpet bombing in Germany, Japan, everywhere. So it’s kind of like I had this it occurred to me that this violent act, I wanted to make it to something positive. Somebody told me the other day, like 60s people put flowers into the barrel of guns, you know Make Peace Not War, so putting instead of bomb, I put flowers to make it peaceful. You can see underneath is actually the town where I came from. Chiba City, Japan. This is a drawing and then a painting. The drawing was different, conversation wise, was fast but the painting was next.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

Table top battle field with toy soldiers whose guns are replaced with flowers, tanks made from thread spools and hills made from Art Forum magazines on a soccer field of fake grass. “I was thinking about this one when I was making it, first of all, as a kid I didn’t have the technique to do this, but if I was ten years old and I did this I would be so happy. But, it came back to me know that I can make a child’s toy on this battle field. And also a toy I kind of think represents society, how our society functions, how we always build a toy, you know? Kids love their toys. It’s a questioning of functional toys and our society. And also a question of human violence.”

“I just got a FaceBook advertisement for a video game saying, “Peace is Not An Option!”. It’s really a violent way we have these games, war as a game. It’s kind of interesting because we don’t have to do it in real life. I always kind of question those things. So this has three things going on here: the field is a soccer field, a game field and also a battle field. And like I said about the question of human violence, soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world but supposedly started from an eighth century England people started kicking someone’s skull. So, it’s a violent game. And yet as a child we crave something like that. Of course, this is artwork, so you’re questioning the function of art. See how thick this Art Forum is?”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“I enjoy doing splashing, throwing paint, my technique is actually air rifle used to splash the paint. This one is similar, a picture of a battle ship, the idea is a 21st Century Noah’s Ark. So, it’s a lot of bad things have happened in the world, somehow I saw this World War II Japanese battle ship, so similar (to the drawing) I wanted to make something peaceful. So I take all the weapons out and change and added trees, a green roof, and also solar and wind power, and then far away you can see the big tsunami coming in. It’s like like combining a History Channel program with recent events. I think if you go to Japan or Europe, you’ll see these mangled concrete, to stop the force of the waves.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“These sculptures, I don’t know if you know this, this whole show is about Love and Peace. This is a toy from when I was a kid, this is a simple toy made from a spool, chop stick and candle. And when you wind it up it moves. And because of the cuts, it can climb over the landscape.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“This big painting first I started from that rapid drawing. I imagined one theory of how wars end, a kind of imagined myself, start from that one (the drawing) then expand to that one (the battle ship) to this one. It’s kind of three different stages of my thinking. You have to start from somewhere. For this painting I was thinking of a color field painting with the splash, kind of more of an abstraction. The painting started from a floor splash, paint and let dry, paint and let dry, then I out the drawing. So it is horizontal and vertical where it came together, a combination of drawing and painting.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“There is an animation by Takaji Matsudo, he made an animation about a space ship based on WWII battle ship and then in the future aliens attacking it, so people on earth decommissioned this battle ship and made it into a space ship…I never grew up drawing comics but for me I enjoyed history stories, but I thought now it’s kind of funny for me to make a comic image here, right now.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

This last drawing combines the photograph of Hiro Sakaguchi on the mountain top staring at the moon surrounded by swirls made from another child’s toy, the Spirograph. Today is the last day for this inspiring show at Seraphin Gallery, so while you’re out visiting POST shows take some time to visit and remember your childhood.

Make Love, Not War 2012.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

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Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Catharine Mulligan, Untitled, acrylic with chalk and gouache on paper

A Drawing Show of Artists in Philadelphia Selected by Alex Kanevsky and Bill Scott at The Philadelphia Sketch Club is an inspiring collection of drawings which stretches the imagination and boundaries of what one thinks of as drawings. From traditional pencil and charcoal drawings to abstract mixed media like gouache, acrylic and house paint, the show is a carefully curated exhibit displaying the state of the art of drawing as considered by two of Philadelphia’s finest artists. Instead of a salon style exhibit with art packed from floor to ceiling, the show gives each piece of artwork room to breath and the viewer the opportunity to examine the work without others elbowing for attention. The historic gallery/studio looks like a room in a museum.

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Mary Page-Evans, Merci de K, charcoal, pastel and gouache on paper

DoNArTNeWs asked Alex Kanevsky about the process of assembling the collection for this extraordinary exhibition of diverse drawings. DoN said, “I know you know a lot of people.” Alex replied, “Well, Bill knows a lot more people than I do. The process was simple. We went to a coffee house, we sat down and tried to write a list of all the people who we know and liked. We figured since this is an educational show and did it because we wanted to see these people’s work in one place. We just invited everybody whose drawings spoke to us.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Richard Taransky, Bella Figura, charcoal and white pastel

Kanevsky continued, “And after that list, which initially was fairly limited, it kept on growing because every couple days after that meeting, I would call or Bill would call and say, ‘How about that person?’. And that’s pretty much how it happened.” DoN asked, “Did you do studio visits?” Alex said, “We did some studio visits. You know, this started with a presentation here about a year ago at The Sketch Club and we saw that it would be fun to do this show and we approached the president with the idea. But when it actually came down to organizing things I was away. I was away the whole summer, so I didn’t get to do many studio visits. I knew what people did and whoever I didn’t know Bill sent me the images over the internet. We did make some choices from the images because we knew what the work looked like in general.”

“These are people whose work we know and like. So it didn’t come out of the blue.” DoN asked about how Alex felt about the end result, he said, “I was so impressed. We were worried that it might look spotty or not very cohesive but once we hung it we were both really impressed with the level of the drawings. Some of the drawings here I just absolutely love them. There were some really good surprises, for example, Michael Rossman’s drawings, but I never met him. And I wanted to have those drawings herein the show because I had admired them for about ten years. Then there’s other drawings I like but I didn’t know what they would give us but never the less they are beautiful.”

We talked bout the influence of the internet and how images are flattened out because of screen resolution but Alex Kanevsky expressed his pleasure at the works when they arrived. He said, “There are some good surprises this way. Some of the work I didn’t know at all because they were one’s that Bill liked, but we kept each other in the loop. If I suggested something then I would send him images. It was a really interesting process. Every single drawing is something we are happy to have here.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Bill Scott, Copy of the Cherry Tree, drypoint on paper

DoNArTNeWs talked with co-curator Bill Scott about the collaboration, “I think Alex approached me once up here about doing a show. And then we mentioned it to Bill Patterson and he said, ‘Sure.’ Then we met because he was about to do the Woodmere show, long before, but the one conscious decision was not to overlap, to give a chance to the people that were not in the juried show. We tried to, well it might be a bit of a rub, but we tried to not just have the same show again.”

DoN asked how Bill Scott decided? Was it the most memorable images? “We both picked people and asked them to send us pictures. About half of them got back to us but in the end each one of us picked ones we liked.” DoN asked, “So you each got to pick some? Was there cooperation?” Bill said, “Yeah, we did it all through e-mail when he was away. It was a lot of work.” How did selecting images from the internet work out? “I really like juried shows but for this each of us, if not both of us knew the artists work. So, I knew what I was looking at. I knew what they were and a lot of them I saw in person. I did a few studio visits, Amanda Bush, Mary Page-Evans. Alex knew Richard Taransky. Doris Staffel, I like her. And John Nazarewycz, I love his work, I knew them. Eileen Goodman, I knew already. So, you know, there’s no point to it, it’s just pictures. We wanted to hang a spacious show so that everything would look important.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Skimantas Pipas, Progress, mixed media on paper

Bill Scott said, “I’ve seen a lot of shows that are so over hung that you might get a migraine headache so that you don’t want to be there. You have to soothe everybody’s ego because they’re in the show, I want people to feel good for having come to see it. To feel inspired for having been here. I’d rather have a show where I feel like I’ve actually been somewhere rather than, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I’d rather leave wanting to see more.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Eileen Goodman, Peaches on a Dress, charcoal on paper

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Laura Velez, Follow, graphite on mylar

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Michael Cierve, Mirror, graphite on paper

Saturday, October 20th is The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s annual fundraising gala called Out of the Past…Into the Future. Featuring fine wines and culinary specialties, the event celebrates America’s oldest artist run arts club with special guest reknowned photographer Zoe Strauss. Dress is creative cocktail, black tie or costume. For tickets contact 214 545 9298.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Made in China, Amie Potsic at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry

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Made in China, Amie Potsic, photography at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry

Amie Potsic lived in San Francisco for many years and found when she moved back to Philadelphia that she had missed experiencing the changes of the seasons. As a world traveler, the photographer shoots pictures everyday and found the relationship of taking pictures at home, where she grew up, can feel fresh and new. For three years Amie took pictures everyday going through the seasons and began to see the Asian influences of her travels in the photographs of Philadelphia trees.

The exhibit, curated by Butch Cordora at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry, for the first time gathers images representing all four seasons in one show. The effect is sublime with groupings of images throughout the gallery communicating the beauty of the Philadelphia landscape and how trees can express an underlying narrative. One day the artist saw a protest in Rittenhouse Square that was against the Chinese government torturing people for practicing a religion called Falun Gong and brought the ideas and the esthetics together in a subtle combination of traditional beauty and clever protest.

Made in China, Amie Potsic, photography at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry

The collection of images has grown over time Amie Potsic says, “It’s interesting, this is the closure of the project where I now have the four images per season and each season deals with a particular issues.” Important social issues like reproductive rights, religious freedom, censorship and working conditions that we can discuss openly in America but are suppressed by the Chinese leadership. “I think it’s interesting, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a lot of political work, all the post-modernist work was really political and then that sort of fell out and it became that work was not about anything topical per se and I think that shift is coming back. A – there’s a lot of topics worth talking about and B – people are wanting more from their artwork and more of that critical discussion. Having something to say again.”

The Made in China images are beautiful and expertly crafted but they each have a little zinger added with Chinese text paired with the translation in English. First impressions look like a traditional Asian signature but when you look closer the words are political in nature offering a subliminal message about government trying to control the way people think and behave.

Made in China, Amie Potsic, photography at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry

“I think there’s an expectation now that artwork be easy to understand. People feel that they think they should ‘get it’. That it should be understandable but that’s not always the function of artwork. There’s a lot of levels of ways you can interact with art on just a visual level, a purely conceptual level and every continuum in between. I think it’s a real stumbling block for people who require that they need to understand everything they’re looking at and not just have an experience. I used to have a class where I taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, I would take them to the San Francisco MOMA, there’s an Yves Klein painting that’s a blue color field painting, a cobalt blue painting, and I knew that when we would meet back at the cafe that there would be this one student who would say, ‘Why is that art? I can do that.’ It was like clockwork every time, but it was the perfect conversation to have because the idea was, ‘But, you didn’t. He thought to do that, he’s making you question what is art.’ And if it pisses you off, all the better.”

Made in China, Amie Potsic, photography at Ven and Vaida Art & Jewelry, 18 South 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, 215-592-4099

Read more about Amie Potsic, Made in China at SideArts.com by Contributing Writer, Cassandra Hoo, Made in Chine, a Thought Provoking Show by Amie Potsic

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

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Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen, photo by Jeff Stroud

Did you ever want to print one of your photos big, really big, like 64″ wide and almost as long as you want? Silicon Fine Art Prints has six Epson wide format printers at their disposal to make your dreams come true, plus they will help you realize your passion with expert advise. That’s why many of Philadelphia’s finest fine art photographers trek to Old City to have their prints made. And for the month of September studio:christensen, on 20th Street, is displaying a collection of incredibly imaginative images produced in the Silicon Fine Art Prints workshop.

studio:christensen is a unique gallery/design space/pop-up shop featuring art, furniture, fashion and photography for the discerning urban dweller. Just walking by the storefront is inspiring, going inside to meet the friendly owner Jt Christensen and his (may DoN say) glamorous assistant Joanna Babarakos is to step into a world of approachable yet unusual design and art.

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen, Joel Lederer

When one enters the gallery, the modern art mixed with beautiful furnishings is satisfyingly uplifting. But Joel Lederer‘s bold pair of enormous prints draws you towards them like a magnet. DoN asked Joel Lederer about the luminous prints, “The images are from a game called Second Life, it’s an on-line 3D virtual world, a massive multi-user on-line role playing game. What this project is, is essentially landscape photography, straight landscape photography, inside that virtual world. And it’s like a survey of essentially different styles that are used to create that community. What’s unique about it is that whereas other games have sort of a set narrative, and a set aesthetic, Second Life’s content is built by the users. You can go in there and rent virtual land and decorate it however you want and bring your own content and textures. I thought that was kind of interesting, so my goal was to bring as many different types of styles of landscape photography within that world.”

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Joel Lederer continues, “In the beginning I was like how do I take a survey view? A documentary view? I figured since the virtual world is built from styles of the real world, I’d have to emulate the individual styles.” DoN asked if it’s a screen shot? “It’s a little more difficult than that, but it’s like a high resolution screen shot.”

Silicon Fine Art Prints at studio:christensen

Joel Lederer‘s work is also on display at SITE Santa Fe, in a show called More Real. “A whole show about truthiness and virtuality.”

“More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness presents work by some of today’s most accomplished and promising international artists who are examining our shifting experience of reality. Over the past century, during a period of unprecedented technological change and global social upheaval, once-established beliefs, or “truths,” have been cast into doubt, changing and shaping our understanding and experience of reality. Through diverse media and in unexpected ways, this exhibition explores the impact and role of deception, play, memory, power, simulation, and new technologies on art and everyday life.” SITE Santa Fe website.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer except where noted, thanks to photographer, Jeff Stroud

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