Alden Cole & Betsy Alexander @ The Magic Garden 2007
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Category Archives: One-Person Art Show
Jed Williams @ 2424 York Street.
The Mysterious Distance Between Men of Means, Jed Mauger Williams @ 2424 York Street.
Jed Mauger Williams paintings are in the antechamber of 2424 York Street, the location of the immense Skybox Gallery. Williams is showing ten works based on themes of his quest for the human figure, pop & mythological and different forms of spirituality. Manipulating symbols, assigning them spectacular color, signifying icons with saturated layers of various media in tumultuous abandon, Jed makes extraordinary images that are extravagantly engaging. Even his presentation was deliberately skewed, absurd and charged with a weird cultural angst like some retrofitted beat/pop/rap artist from the past, maybe Paris or Philly, quirky yet hip, kind of ugly beautiful and strange.
Jed M. Williams – semi-abstract pop images seethe with multiple personalities, modern memes & contemporary style. Williams’ gallery & studio is @ 6th & Bainbridge but DoN loves how ballsy Jed was in working his way into the hot new art center in Fishtown.
Greeting From My Home Planet, Jed Williams.
Pop references and graffiti vibes permeate Williams’ paintings yet a darker narrative creates disturbance and tension. One day DoN picked Jed up @ The PMA, he had a friend deliver returned art work to the gift shop for him to pick up, this way his work was inside the museum like Ray Johnson mailing art to MOMA because he knew they cataloged everything.
Explorations…..In The Neighborhood – Ed Bronstein @ Gallery 22
Ed Bronstein is an artist member of Gallery 22 owned & curated by Shawn Murray and is probably Philly’s most prolific plein air artist. It’s a wonder he gets any painting done though, since he is so gregarious and popular that when he’s painting outdoors people (DoN included) stop to talk. The collection of 46 paintings at Gallery 22 attests to Ed’s drive to get the job done; many of the paintings are totally plein air but some, like the dog paintings, are completed in the studio. Bronstein sometimes also works from memory in the studio after beginning a painting in the field, he is so familiar with the territory he could probably create a Philly scene with no reference material at all.
Ed Bronstein @ Gallery 22. Ed told DoN that usually he has to paint the doggie portraits from photographs since as we know dogs don’t stay still for very long, even when they’re sleeping. Ed captured many of these dog images at the Schuykill River Park also known as the dog socialization area – one of KaTy the ArT Dog & Lady Doofie’s favorite spots to hang out.
Scenes of Philadelphia by Ed Bronstein @ Gallery 22. DoN recognized the view from Bartram’s Garden in the lower painting since he sat in the same spot but tried to paint out the oil tanks, focusing on the trees. Bronstein saw the sculptural beauty and urban aesthetic of the oil tanks and captured the scene with bold color and swift brush strokes.
Ed Bronstein started this painting in Fitler Square but then worked on it for months in the studio. Libby Rosoff of The Art Blog commented on how hot the colors are compared to the plein air works. Ed will be having a meet and greet in the gallery soon, check their website for dates & time.
Su Tomesen’s 40,000 Feet presented by I.C.E.
The Icebox @ Crane Arts Center in Fishtown is an enormous white, cavernous space with high walls and no columns, it actually used to be a huge refrigerator. Now it’s one of the premier art spaces in Philadelphia and through 11/22 will be hosting “40,000 Feet” by Su Tomesen, five huge projections of clouds viewed from an airplane with mist drifting across the floor and the low hum of jets, bleeps and bloops of seat-belt signs and the grind of lowering landing gear. The effect is that of the perfect flight, the magic of riding high in the sky finally restored without having to take off your shoes.
Su explained to DoN there are several variables: time, movement, imperfection and the human hand. The movie is not perfect, it’s not shot with five movie cameras somehow suspended from the underside of a plane, it’s the same clip playing at five different intervals. But the illusion of clouds drifting endlessly by is mesmerizing like flying on a magic carpet with the mist drifting through room creating a veil of mystery. Tomesen is thrilled with the space, the show previously was exhibited in a restaurant in Amsterdam above a row of windows abbreviating some of the magic.
40,000 Feet time-warped DoN back to cloud-watching with Grandma, looking for animals and faces in the sky while lying on the ground, only this time the view is from Heaven.
There is an artist reception Wednesday, 11/18 @ Crane Arts, 1400 American Street.
Treacy Ziegler, Before An Ocean @ F.A.N. Gallery
Treacy Ziegler @ F.A.N. Gallery in Old City.
When DoN introduced himself to Treacy Ziegler he immediately put foot in mouth by gushing, “I love your frames“. Ack! But Ziegler actually begins her process by outlining the canvas with black tape in anticipation of placing the finished work in an appropriately unobtrusive frame which highlights the painting yet is an interesting construction, simultaneously decorative, efficient and subdued. Treacy trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as a print-maker but changed direction to painting which explains the careful composition of each work of art. The sense of light and space is reminiscent of Edward Hopper (a DoN fave) and Zeigler admits he’s an influence since his style is recognizably American. Treacy actually produces her own paints combining pigments and oils to develop just the right consistency, not fond of brush strokes she thinks of the brushwork as color, turning texture into design, stretching the stokes like fluid creating subtle transparent reflective light.
Treacy Ziegler @ F.A.N Gallery.
Treacy Ziegler @ F.A.N. Gallery. DoN thinks this is a great idea to steal with small round canvases inserted into cutouts in simple squares of black wood. Good artists copy, great artists steal!