Philadelphia Open Studio Tours – DoNBrewerMultimedia
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Category Archives: Design
Grow @ Off the Wall/Dirty Frank’s – Salon @ Plastic Club
Nancy Barch, Chained Mail, mixed media @ Grow – Off the Wall Gallery. The use of disposable materials such as the ceiling tile and old slides reek with hidden meaning and memes. Slides are so anachronistic and ceiling tiles, even though functional at insulation and sound-proofing, are out of style. Barch’s piece sends obtuse mixed messages stimulating social consciousness neurons to fire in the brain.
Grow @ Off the Wall Gallery in Dirty Frank’s Bar.
Alisa Fox, Jars, mixed media.
One of the cool things @ Off the Wall is the corner display case where more delicate constructions can be installed. The team of Jody and Togo extend much effort in branding, soliciting, promoting and selling art from publicity to art cards and posters to installation, the production is always top notch. Off the Wall has hosted hundreds of local aspiring and established artists in their thoughtful exhibitions.
Karl Olsen, Free Compost, mixed media including ingredients from mustard to absinthe.
Grow is on display through August 7th and includes work by 30 artists including members of the Plastic Club, Photographic Society of Philadelphia and other regional arts groups. Frank’s has been an outpost for many Plastic Club members and recently Anders Hansen hosted a Salon at The Plastic Club to discuss the Grow show. In branding the show, curator Jody Sweitzer and manager Togo Travalia, put a new spin on the current “green” trend with a focus on recycled materials and ideas.
Karl Olsen used phylo dough, Julia Fisichella‘s amazing photoshop collages are inspired, Ed Snyder’s floral photograph exquisitely illuminated the concept with an image pinched from nature, Veronica Schmude‘s moody interior photograph is brimming with stolen narrative (Veronica is the guest speaker at this Tuesday’s PSoP lecture series at The Plastic Club). The Salon was lively: Shoshanna Aron (just back from Israel) pointed out how being “green” is a new concept – that the old paradigm was consumerism, Bob Bohne introduced the topic of the healing power of art and the importance of community outreach, Alan Clawens highlighted how artists resist creating new work for a theme show and try to squeeze old works into new parameters, DoN mentioned bricolage and Burnell Yow!s amazing show at Smile. The group sipped wine and chatted until sunset and the party moved to Frank’s. The discussion helped DoN realize that thinking outside the box isn’t always the best approach – sometimes all you need is the box.
NTPE4
NTPE4 means NewsToday Print Exchange 4. Newstoday, which now is simply QBN.com , is a website where artists, designers and web coders network on-line. For the last four years someone organizes a print exchange with the first 20 people who sign up – the idea is to send 19 prints to other artists and they each send you one resulting in a collection of twenty artworks by some truly talented artists and designers from around the country. DoN has started receiving prints in the mail and it feels like Christmas in July; DoN will run a special edition of DoNArTNeWs featuring images of the works from NYC, Denver, Anaheim, Phoenix, OFallon, Il.,Brooklyn, Tampa, Portland, Or., Woodland Hills, Milwaukee…and of course, Philadelphia.
With all the art clubs in Philly, wouldn’t it be cool to so the same here? Let DoN know what you think. So far I’ve heard from Anthe – maybe we could do a drawing exchange.
Photo Synthesis @ DaVinci Art Alliance
Photo Synthesis is –
A juried awards exhibition featuring photography and photographic processes
with art by:
Amy Ahearn, Tony Anthony, Keith Auerbach, DoN Brewer, Suzanne Comer, Judy Engle, Carlos Gil, Robert Grunke, Rikard Larma, Marilyn Lavins, Richard Marr, Karen McDonnell & Anthony Cortosi, Lee Muslin, Liz Nicklus, Mickie Rosen, Armand Scavo, Susan Van Selous, D.B. Stovall, Robert Waldeck, Ted Warchal, Julien Weitzenfeld, James Widerman.
Juror and Awards Judge: Internationally acclaimed photographer JON NAAR.
Mr. Naar was present at the opening reception, signing his books The Birth of Graffiti (2007) and Getting the Picture (2005). DoN purchased Birth of Graffiti and chatted with Naar about how to present photographs most effectively. “Naar’s photographs have been published in many of the world’s leading magazines and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. In 2005-06 at the Jan Cunen Museum in the Netherlands, his retrospective attracted a record-breaking 15,000 visitors (Jon Naar’s website).”
DoN with his entry “light beings (Dora & Pablo)”, photo by Rikard Larma.
Award winning photograph by Suzanne Comer. (DoN agrees it looks like a botanical drawing – just stunning.)
Suzanne Comer with Photo Synthesis juror Jon Naar. Comer was trained as a painter who used photography for reference but is now a primarily a photographer which explains her painterly eye. Comer was thrilled to win an award with such terrific competition at The DaVinci Art Alliance, she positively glowed with pride.
Artist Liz Nicklus with her photo montage/collage.
Liz Nicklus’ “Witness“, mixed media.
Susan Van Selous‘ “Carley’s Daisy“, digital design.
Photo by Rikard Larma @ Photo Synthesis.
Artist Marilyn Lavins with her entry in Photo Synthesis @ DaVinci Art Alliance.
Miller’s T-Shirt was created by Margharita Warhola, niece of Andy Warhol, exclusively for Deb. Andy would have been 80 years old this year and has been gone from our plane of existence for twenty years now – hard to believe. Dr. Deb explained the meaning of photography in her opening remarks, “Phos is Greek for “light,” and graphein is Greek for “to write”–so photography means writing with light.”
All photography by DoNBrewerMultimedia except where noted.
PANMA presents WEB 2.0 @ The Science Center
Philadelphia Area New Media Association presented a primer on new web applications which was totally fascinating, fast-paced and intelligently presented, including talks by Kelani Nicholeof M, Johnnie Billota of Indy Hall and Nick Floro of Sealworks Interactive Studios. DoN learned so much cool stuff about the web, social networking, design and working with clients – PANMA is a wonderful resource for artists, designers, coders, videographers, photographers – if you are one of the afore mentioned you should join PANMA, it’s free, fun and informative. The presentation took place in the Buckminster Fuller room with a portrait of Bucky that seems to stare at you wherever you are in the room as well as his Dymaxion map of the world – very cool. Do you know what “FOAF” or “OWL” means? DoN does now.
Some of the cool websites we looked at include: