I was skimming your website today and realized… hey! I have something they might be interested in!
I am a junior graphic design major at the University of the Arts. Last year, I received a grant from the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy to create a ~new~ kind of women’s magazine. Jump cut to now… Issue No. 1 has been published! The Bridge Magazine features 17 original articles written by everyday women on topics like international breakups, uncomfortable conversations with your gyno, how to tell your boss that you are pregnant, first loves, and felony convictions.
This is a small project that was completed as a love letter to the amazing women I know, with the hopes of growing that circle, if even by a little bit. I partnered with Girls Inc. of Greater Philadelphia, with 25% of the proceeds benefiting their incredible programming for young women.
It would mean the world if you would consider highlighting the project on your website. I think your readers would be interested in the story of a project that is giving local women a platform to share their experiences. Thank you for your consideration! – Aubrey Fink
About The Bridge, Field Guide for the Female
I had the idea for this project after realizing how little I was getting from the articles in women’s magazines. I could get better advice on life, love, and work from my dog… he is a REALLY good boy. I recognized that I was getting incredible advice from the women in my family because they actually have my best interest at heart. There’s a level of love, kindness, and realness in their wisdom. They are the ones who get real with me about how to deal with the three luscious black hairs that grow out of my chin. I needed a way to collect and revisit the great advice I was receiving from the wise women around me. Hence, The Bridge was born.
About Girls, Inc.
In partnership with schools and at Girls Inc. centers, we focus on the development of the whole girl. She learns to value herself, take risks, and discover and develop her inherent strengths. The combination of long-lasting mentoring relationships, a pro-girl environment, and research-based programming equips girls to navigate gender, economic, and social barriers, and grow up healthy, educated, and independent. Informed by girls and their families, we also advocate for legislation and policies to increase opportunities and rights for all girls.
Thank you to Aubrey Fink for the content of this post.
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Jessica Dimuzio, award-winning children’s author, will read from her book
Bark! Bark! Bark for My Park! at DVAA
Jessica Dimuzio, VMD, conservation educator, author and veterinarian, will read from her book Bark! Bark! Bark for My Park! on Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 10:30 AM at Da Vinci Art Alliance, 704 Catharine Street in Philadelphia. This program is presented in collaboration with the Bella Vista Neighbors Association. This reading is appropriate for children 4 and older, conservation educators, gardeners and animal lovers of all ages.
Dr. Jessica Dimuzio graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, specializing in wildlife preservation. She has conducted research on elephants, rhinos, and wild baboons and taught conservation programs in Africa, Asia, and North America. Dedicated to wildlife conservation, Dr. “D.” loves to get kids of all ages excited about wildlife and their natural habitats through her nonfiction writing, “too true” storytelling, classroom talks, and nature walks. She provides these programs through Nature Tales and Trails, LLC, the company she founded in 2011.
Dr. Dimuzio, a member of Patchwork: A Storytelling Guild uses humor and suspense to share her international experiences with audiences of any age.
Her international award-winning book Bark! Bark! Bark for My Park! recounts the real story of how her five-pound puppy, Johnny Angel, saved a 690-acre farm park from destruction and is one of the few children’s books written on saving open space. It received the Silver Medal from Mom’s Choice Awards in the Green Earth Category and a rare RECOMMENDED from the US Review of Books.
Da Vinci Art Alliance (DVAA) provides artists with a community that fosters artistic expression and growth through our exhibitions and programs.
Da Vinci Art Alliance (DVAA) was founded in 1931 to serve the needs of local artists and artisans and to promote the edification and appreciation of the arts in the community. Our building in South Philadelphia was obtained in 1959 to provide community space and studio, and gallery spaces for our membership. DVAA members are a diverse group of creatives of all ages and backgrounds, including those with advanced degrees in their fields and those that are self-taught. Members include award-winning artists whose works are in museums and private collections across the country as well as emerging artists, showing work for their first time.
The Bella Vista Neighbors Association (BVNA) improves Bella Vista’s quality of life and strengthens community bonds. BVNA encourages civic involvement, provides a neutral and public discussion forum, preserves and augments our institutions and character, supports the delivery of government services, and promotes dialogue with elected officials. They are an independent and nonprofit organization.
Thank you to Linda Dubin Garfield for the content of this post. For more information, contact Linda Dubin Garfield at linda@davinciartalliance.org
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This winter, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Keith Smith at Home, the first major monographic presentation of the artist’s work in five decades. Spanning his entire career, the exhibition brings together over 60 exceptional and varied examples of his handmade artist’s books and experimental photographs, prints, collages, and fabric pieces made over the last half century. The exhibition places special emphasis on his artist’s books, the work for which he is best known. Many of these works are from the artist’s collection and have not been exhibited publicly before.
Smith is an especially private person, and one whose life at home has been the inspiration for much of his art. Central to the installation is Book Number 82, Keith Smith at Home (1982), showing a sequence of views of his residence in Rochester, New York, where he has lived since 1975. Page by page, it conveys the passage of time: views of the same room shift, household objects trade places, and friends appear and reappear in framed artwork on the house’s walls. Visitors will be able to page through this book digitally on an iPad in the gallery.
The exhibition highlights books that challenge perceptions of what a book can be. Book Number 11, Up (1969) explores the interplay of images by alternating film-positive transparencies with opaque pages. As the film-positive page is turned, it creates the appearance of an image moving from one side of the page to the next. Book Number 91: a string book (1982) consists of cord, punched holes, and blank pages. Strings are extended across each page and spread in different patterns, sometimes taut and other times slack, creating an abstract and rhythmic narrative. Smith considers his string book to be photographic, as it deals with light, shadow, focus, motif, and sequence.
Smith has referred to his work as an open diary. Self-representation is a key motif, whether appearing lighthearted or uneasy. Some self-portraits reflect the struggles and joys the artist has experienced in coming out as a gay man, as in Untitled, from Roadside Attractions (1979), a multilayered photograph in which two silhouetted male figures caress each other’s shoulders.
Smith has said, “Social intimidation is not as odious as repression that is self-inflicted. When I permitted my work to speak openly, I gained my freedom and my self-respect.”
Also on view is a selection of handmade postcards, a format that Smith has experimented with since the 1960s. He made these cards with particular recipients in mind, but, feeling unable to part with them, has kept them. In addition, the exhibition features fabric pieces from the 1960s and 1970s. Among these is Margaret Gave me a Rainbow 2:30pm 21, November 1971, a collage of a photograph of an ear, curtain tassels, and an impression of the artist’s profile made on a color photocopier affixed to an army-issue bedsheet. Smith made Eye Quilt (1965), a full-size quilt screenprinted with a dense pattern of eyes, while a student at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Keith Smith: Word Play is a related installation on view in the Museum’s Library. This intimate display highlights the ways in which Smith uses word play, poetry, typography, and sequencing to create surprising relationships between images and text in his books.
Exhibition organizer Amanda N. Bock, The Lynne and Harold Honickman Assistant Curator of Photographs, said: “While Smith may seem shy personally, his art is candid, intimate, delightfully irreverent, and transgressive. To share a large body of his work with the public is an exciting and rare opportunity, and it underscores our commitment to showing provocative work by living artists.”
Smith’s reluctance to categorize his work established him as a rogue member of both the photography and printmaking departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he graduated in 1967. His works are often radical departures from conventional books, and may unfold, light up, hang on the wall or in a corner, or be constructed of pencils or the shirt off the artist’s own back. Certain themes-friendship, love, desire, intimacy, and domesticity- recur. He has made over 300 artist’s books and over half a dozen seminal instructional manuals on bookbinding.
Smith’s work is represented in leading public and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; the Nelson-Atkins Museum; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships (1972 and 1980) and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1978), and has taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester.
Book Number 91, a string book, 1982, by Keith Smith, American, b. 1938. Artist’s book with cut outs, punched holes, and string. Courtesy of Keith Smith and Philip Zimmermann.
Public Programs
Representing Queerness
Sunday, March 4 | 2:30 p.m. | Perelman Building
Community Conversations open discussions about socially relevant topics.
Included in Pay What You Wish admission.
Bookmaking Workshops
Saturdays, March 17, April 21, and May 5 | 1:30-4:30 p.m. | Perelman Building
Each session includes a tour of Keith Smith at Home with the exhibition curator.
Each workshop: $20 ($16 members); includes Perelman Building admission
Curator
Amanda N. Bock, The Lynne and Harold Honickman Assistant Curator of Photographs
Exhibition Location
Julian Levy Gallery, Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building
Installation Location, Library, Second Floor, Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building
Support
Support for this exhibition was provided by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
Social Media
Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Tumblr/YouTube: @philamuseum
We are Philadelphia’s art museum. A landmark building. A world-renowned collection. A place that welcomes everyone. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors-through scholarly study and creative play-to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world-and themselves-anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.
Each of the exhibition’s 26 works on paper has been hand-printed by Silva and culled from a larger group in his “Picket Fences” series, serving a symbol of the way we choose what parts of ourselves to present to a society that makes judgements of approval or disapproval, of acceptance or rejection. While Silva strives for perfection, the hand-printing process produces slight variations that he can’t help but leave for the viewer to pass their judgements on.
“These screen prints relate to our daily lives in which we strive for acceptance; we are selective and we seek some kind of perfection in ourselves and in others,” Silva explains. “And it is this search for perfection in the many roles we all play that leads to insecurities that we have a difficult time admitting to or sharing with someone: insecurities that I’m acknowledging here. But ultimately, I am who I am. We are who we are.”
This project originated from the artist’s own frustrations and discouragement while working in his studio, often resulting in insecurities and self-doubt that spilled over into the many other roles in his life: a son, a friend, a gay man, a minority, a citizen, an outcast, a non-white, a non-black, a punk, a skeptic, a sinner, a foreigner, an American.
When pondering how he measures up, Silva’s collective work asks, “Is there a perfect state of being out there? Is the grass greener on the other side? Where is my white picket fence?”
The William Way Center is open Monday through Friday from 11:00am -10:00pm and on Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00pm – 5:00pm. Admission to the main floor gallery is free.
Daniel Tucker, Guest Curator, Graduate Program Director in Social and Studio Practices at Moore College of Art and Design
March 27 – May 27, 2017 Public Program and Reception: Thursday, March 30, 2017, 6:00 – 8:30pm
Our public program begins at 6:00 pm followed by the reception Rowan University Art Gallery, 301 High Street West, First Floor, Glassboro, NJ 08028
Admission to the gallery and reception is free and open to the public.
The public program begins at 6:00 pm, led by guest curator Daniel Tucker in dialogue on art, geography, and agricultural planning with Professor Megan Bucknum Ferrigno from Rowan University’s School of Geography and Environment, and with exhibiting artists.
Artists explore the US food supply chain and its complex patterns of distribution in between the point of origin (the farm) and its point of consumption (the plate). The exhibition aims to highlight the work of contemporary artists grappling with the complexity of this movement through multi-media, research-based, and participatory practices that focus a lens on the social and industrial impacts of migrant workers, food justice movements, immigration, multiculturalism, and economic disparities. This project builds upon Tucker’s event series, Moving Units: Where Food & Economy Converge. A companion booklet, produced by Rowan University Art Gallery, serves to provide a general overview of US food supply chains. It includes descriptions of the artist contributions to the exhibition that relate to each step on the chain. Throughout this booklet you read about an approach to geographic education that values connecting with the world outside the classroom. The booklet was researched and written by Megan Bucknum Ferrigno, part-time faculty member of Rowan University’s Department of Geography, Planning and Sustainability. Additional contributions made by Dr. Chuck McGlynn, Dr. Jennifer Kitson and Makenzie Franco.
About the Artists and Projects
With Corner Store, Amber Art & Design– a team of Philadelphia-based artists that work on public art within marginalized communities that have little or no access to art – explores the contemporary sociological and psychological intersection between pan-ethnic Black and Asian communities in Philadelphia and how relationships are shaped based on which side of the counter we stand. (image top)
Illinois-based artists Ryan Griffis and Sarah Ross are represented by Between the Bottomlands and the World, a video (combining photographs, narrative writing, and moving images) exploring the rural Midwestern town of Beardstown, IL, a place of global exchange and international mobility, inscribed by post-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) realities.
Brian Holmes, an art and cultural critic with a Ph.D. in Romance Languages has a long-standing interest in neoliberal globalization and a taste for on-the-ground intervention. His online atlas, Living Rivers, is devoted to the Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds and shows these fluid ecosystems as they are inhabited by a multitude of creatures and radically altered by human enterprise.
Otabenga Jones & Associates, a Houston-based educational art organization, documents a collaborative art project and public health program addressing the ongoing crisis of obesity and its related risks with “The People’s Plate.” Inspired by the Black Panther Free Breakfast for School Children Program, this art project includes a public mural in Houston and programs to kick off a year-long commitment to health education.
Cynthia Main, a multidisciplinary artist from Missouri focuses on relating to the land as part of an integral view of a more sustainable society. She shares her hand-made buckets and barrels created using traditional techniques to readdress storage as one of the current dilemmas of localizing production.
Chicago’s Claire Pentecost uses photography to show how industrial agriculture is only partly about supplying food and how it is structured to meet the problem of expense and excess capital accumulation when considering the cost of complex machinery, brand name chemical herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and patented seeds.
Philly Stake is a locally-sourced, recurring dinner that raises funds for creative and relevant community engaged projects that contributes to the well-being of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods through community arts, urban agriculture, social services, and activist work.
Stephanie Rothenberg’s Reversal of Fortune: The Garden of Virtual Kinship is a garden in the form of a global map that explores the question of what it means to be charitable through the click of a button and examines the cultural phenomena of online crowd-funded charity and how the flow of money impacts the project, positively and negatively.
Candice Smith runs Freedom Arts, an after school collaborative art program at Camden’s Freedom Prep Middle School, which is creating an installation responding to the idea that Camden is a “food desert” and examining the movement of food at their school and in their community.
Philadelphia-based Kristen Neville Taylor’s installation – a globe depicting routes of oranges and actual oranges outfitted with a QR code that links to music, articles, folk tales, and art – was inspired by a lyric from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” (“and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China”) which she associated with the market place and the movement of food but also romance and exotic foreign cultures.
Admission to the gallery and reception is free and open to the public.
Free parking is now available in the parking garage on Mick Drive directly across from the gallery. For visitor information go to our website: www.rowan.edu/artgallery.
Thank you to Mary Salvante, Rowan University Art Gallery for the content of this post.
