Category Archives: Paintings

DECOROUS

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DECOROUS. Camp, Costello“Decorous exhibition, Installation view #1” Artwork by: Donald E. Camp and Aubrie Costello Ó Amie Potsic 2018

Iconic Philadelphia artists call for social justice and question American identity in

Decorous, the launch exhibition by Amie Potsic Art Advisory.

DECOROUS

Donald E. Camp  |  Aubrie Costello  |  Tom Judd

Curated and Presented by Amie Potsic, CEO & Principal Curator of Amie Potsic Art Advisory, LLC. 
In partnership with Michael Garden Group

July 19 – September 15, 2018

 – EVENTS –

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, August 16th, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

ADVISORY LAUNCH CELEBRATION & CLOSING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 15th, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

AMIE POTSIC INTERVIEWED ON ART WATCH RADIO: Wednesday, September 26th, 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM Listen on AM Radio WCHE Live stream at http://wche1520.com/project/art-watch/

Location: Space and Company, 2200 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA

Hours: Monday – Friday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Evenings and weekends by appointment. Admission is free

Inquiries and information: Amie Potsic, CEO & Principal Curator, Amie Potsic Art Advisory, LLC

amie@amiepotsicartadvisory.com

www.amiepotsic.com

610.731.6312

Presented in partnership with: http://www.michaelgarden.com/

DECOROUS, CAMP Woman Who Writes, Lorene CareyDonald E. Camp, Woman Who Writes/ Lorene Carey, Casein and raw earth pigment on archival rag paper. Photographic Casein Monoprint 22” x 30”, 2006, Ó Donald E. Camp 2006

Philadelphia, PA – Amie Potsic Art Advisory presents Decorous, an exhibition featuring Donald E. Camp, Aubrie Costello, and Tom Judd at Space and Company, located at 2200 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA.  Curated and presented by Amie Potsic, CEO and Principal Curator of Amie Potsic Art Advisory, in partnership with Michael Garden Group, the show is on view now through September 15.  The opening reception will be on Thursday, August 16th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM.  The closing reception and Advisory Launch Celebration will be on Saturday, September 15 from 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM.  Both events are free and open to the public.  Hours are Monday through Friday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM and by appointment.

Decorous, featuring Donald E. Camp, Aubrie Costello, and Tom Judd, elevates and honors the words, individuals, and histories in our collective unconscious.  The artists’ work melds social justice, politics, human rights, and personal narratives to yield a provocative and layered dialogue.  They give voice to those struggling to be heard, including African-American men, women, and those seeking a better life for their families.  With a distinctly American view on race, activism, and the frontier spirit, these artists invite us to confront and engage in conversation by elevating the every-man/woman to opulence, reverence, and relevance.

Presented at Space and Company, the artwork resonates with the ornate décor of the historic building.  The molding, accents, and chandeliers interact with the rough-around-the-edges aesthetic of the artwork to shed light on the fine line of between high and low culture as well as the line-in-the-sand drawn by class and racial differences.  Depicting those often marginalized as revered portraits and voicing their words in silk slogans alongside suited businessmen in free-fall conjures the possibility that roles can be reversed and identity can be reformed.

DECOROUS, JUDD, Diving figureTom Judd, Memories, 30” x 23”, Lithograph, printed by Ron Wyffels, 2018

Donald E. Camp is an NEA, Pew, and Guggenheim recipient whose work addressing the humanity of all people, including African-American men, has been influential on the national discourse related to race and human rights.  Tom Judd is a Pollock-Krasner awardee whose internationally exhibited paintings, collages, and documentaries have provided a vital American vision from coast to coast for decades.  During this exhibition, Judd also has new public art on view at the University of the Arts.  Aubrie Costello is a sought after silk-graffiti artist whose work speaks of truth and female power by creating interventions in galleries, public spaces, performances, and street art dialogues.  Together, their work embodies the growth, collaboration, and calls for social justice of our times.

Decorous is the launch exhibition presented by Amie Potsic Art Advisory, LLC.  The show celebrates the contributions of accomplished artists in Philadelphia while highlighting the curatorial expertise of the company’s founder. Potsic began the Advisory in January of 2018 in order to fill a void of support for artists, collectors, and institutions while helping them to create lasting artistic legacies.  Seeing a need among artists and collectors to plan for the future and create meaning from their life’s work, she now offers Legacy Planning as well as independent curatorial services and art advising. The closing reception for Decorous on September 15th will also serve as the launch celebration for the Advisory and will feature artist talks, entertainment, light fare, and libations.

DECOROUS, COSTELLO, StayAubrie Costello, Stay, Silk, chiffon, dressmaker pins, thread, 12” x 17”, 2017

Also this September, Potsic will be curating Natural Wonder, a large-scale photography and video exhibition presented through Inliquid at Park Towne Place.  The exhibition will feature Jenny Lynn, Caroline Elizabeth Savage, Keith Sharp, Laura Krasnow, and Leo Hylan.  Park Towne Place, located at 2200 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy in Philadelphia, will offer an opening reception for the exhibition on Thursday, September 20th at 6:00 PM.  Potsic and the artists in the exhibition will be presenting artists talks at the event.

On Wednesday, September 26th from 1:00 – 1:30 PM, Potsic will be interviewed on Art Watch Radio by host Lele Galer.  Potsic will discuss her Advisory and how she supports artists and collectors and provides legacy planning to solidify artistic legacies.  The show can be heard live on WCHE 1520 AM Radio and can be live streamed from their website at http://wche1520.com/project/art-watch/ .

Amie Potsic is the CEO and Principal Curator of Amie Potsic Art Advisory providing visionary and advisory support to artists, collectors, businesses, and institutions with expertise in Legacy Planning.  She is also Chair of the Art In City Hall Artistic Advisory Board to the Office of Arts and Culture of the City of Philadelphia as well as an established photographer and installation artist.  She has held faculty appointments at U.C. Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute and has been a guest lecturer at The International Center of Photography and The Delaware Contemporary. She also served as Director of Gallery 339, Director & Curator of the CDP at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Main Line Art Center, and curated exhibitions for Philagrafika 2010 and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

For more information, please contact Amie Potsic at amie@amiepotsicartadvisory.com or 610-731-6312.

Thank you to Amie Potsic for the content of this post.

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Kind

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Kind of Blue: Postcard Show, 1241 CARPENTER STUDIOS + ARTSPACE 1241Sarah Watkins Nathan

Kind of Blue: Postcard Show, 1241 CARPENTER STUDIOS + ARTSPACE 1241

July 13, 2018 to July 28, 2018

Some people sing the blues. Some people feel blue. Picasso has a blue period. Blue is one of the three primary color of pigments in painting and traditional color theory, as well as in the RGB color model. It lies between violet and green on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when observing light with a dominant wavelength between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. — Wikipedia

ARTIST RECEPTION: Saturday July 14, 4 – 6 PM

PUBLIC HOURS: Fridays + Saturdays 1 – 4 PM

Kind of Blue: Postcard Show, 1241 CARPENTER STUDIOS + ARTSPACE 1241Thom Duffy

Did you know a blue jay’s feathers and a butterfly’s wings aren’t actually blue? Neither are your blue eyes. Pure water is, but only very slightly. From the colors we see in flowers and birds, to the hues we use in art and decoration, there’s more than one way to make a rainbow—and it all starts with molecules and structures that are too small to see. –Science Friday

Kind of Blue: Postcard Show, 1241 CARPENTER STUDIOS + ARTSPACE 1241Terri Fridkin

“The Post Office was the only establishment allowed to print postcards, and it held its monopoly until May 19, 1898, when Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act, which allowed private publishers and printers to produce postcards. Initially, the United States government prohibited private companies from calling their cards “postcards”, so they were known as “souvenir cards” – Wikipedia

Kind of Blue: Postcard Show, 1241 CARPENTER STUDIOS + ARTSPACE 1241DoN Brewer

Miniature painting, also called (16th–17th century) limning, small, finely wrought portrait executed on vellum, prepared card, copper, or ivory. The name is derived from the minium, or red lead, used by the medieval illuminators. Arising from a fusion of the separate traditions of the illuminated manuscript and the medal, miniature painting flourished from the beginning of the 16th century down to the mid-19th century. – Britannica

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Modern Times

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Modern Times, Charles Demuth, Lancaster (In the Province No. 2)Lancaster (In the Province No. 2), 1920, by Charles Demuth, American, 1883 – 1935. Oil on canvas, 30 x 16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950-5-1.

World-class Modernism Exhibition at The Philadelphia Museum of Art

By Bob Moore

The works of art in the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘s Modern Times exhibition, covering a period of artistic upheaval from 1910 to 1950, are seldom unexpected or unfamiliar. The modernist trend which they embody is deeply etched into our cultural unconscious, the background or context to everything that has happened since in the art world. Marcel DuChamp‘s nude descending her staircase, Georgia O’Keefe‘s succulent flowers, Marsden Hartley‘s colorful World War I compositions: these were the visual soil that Americans like myself grew up in.

Modern Times, Alfred Stieglitz, The City of AmbitionThe City of Ambition, 1910 (negative); c. 1930 (print), by Alfred Stieglitz, American, 1871 – 1944. Gelatin silver print, image/sheet/mount: 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949-18-47.

Walking through the 160-some pieces in the exhibition is like paging through the Modern American Art section of an extensive History of Art, with few outright surprises.

What is surprising (at least to me) in this exhibition was how many of these works are owned outright by the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘ (PMA). Not on loan from some internationally-recognized museum, but property of the PMA. Ours, all ours. This highlights a side of the exhibit not about Art but about Acquisitions. PMA’s Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Rub, in a foreword to the associated book, notes that “It was during the 1940s that the PMA’s holding of modern European and American art were established through several important gifts…” including donations by Albert E. Gallatin, Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Steiglitz, and Walter and Louise Arensburg (not Annanberg, another Philadelphia philanthropist who bequeathed his collection instead to the rival Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).

Modern Times, Marsden Hartley, Painting No 4 (Black Horse)Painting No. 4 (A Black Horse), 1915, by Marsden Hartley, American, 1877 -1943. Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 31 5/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949-18-8

There are a few works in the show not owned (yet) by the PMA: the book identifies one statue lent by a Museum Trustee and some fourteen paintings (including Charles Demuth‘s sizzling Jazz lent by another Trustee, with a note hinting at their eventual acquisition by the Museum.

The Modern Times exhibition curator was Jessica Todd Smith. In an essay in the associated book, she tells how the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) pioneered Modern Art in Philadelphia. But an ill-fated one-month PAFA exhibition of works from the collection of Albert C. Barnes in 1923 caused a ridiculous public outcry (the work was “trash,” and “the creations of a disintegrating mind,” said reviewers; think of peasants with torches and pitchforks).

Smith says the “critical reaction to the Barnes collection in 1923 scared PAFA’s board from presenting any further exhibitions of modern art until the 1950s…” The controversy also led to Barnes’ alienation from the Philadelphia art scene and all that followed. See Philadelphia Inquirer, “Barnes at the Pennsylvania Academy: A scandal in 1923“, May 4, 2012, by much-missed art critic Ed Sozanski.

The PMA then “picked up the modernist gauntlet,” Smith writes, under museum director Fiske Kimball. Smith says other figures in PMA’s acquisition of American Modern Art included R. Sturgis Ingersoll and Carl Zigrosser.

In a footnote 41 to her essay, Smith notes that some work was excluded from the exhibition, including “work that wholeheartedly embraces abstraction to the exclusion of any hints of figuration, leaving out most geometric abstraction and, on the more painterly end of the spectrum, Abstract Expressionism…” She also regretted that the museum had holes in its collections, including Social Realism, Regionalism, Native American, and Central and South American art.

In footnote 25, Smith lists the various art clubs that kept Modern Art alive in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Sketch Club and the Philadelphia Art Alliance — but most notably not including the Plastic Club, an artists’ club which has been around since 1897.

The drama of acquisition politics and finance aside, however, the work in the Modern Times  show is a world-class exhibition put on single-handedly by our local museum. Don’t miss it!

MODERN TIMES: American Art 1910 – 1950, Philadelphia Museum of Art April 18-September 3, 2018

(Associated Book) AMERICAN MODERNISM: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Jessica Todd Smith

Thank you to Bob Moore for the content of this post.

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Unintended

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Unintended Consequences An Interview with Brooke Lanier By Paula Cahill

Unintended Consequences
An Interview with Brooke Lanier by Paula Cahill

Unintended Consequences, May 5 through June 5, 2018

Opening Reception, Saturday, May 5, Noon to 3:00pm

Artist Talk, Tuesday, May 15, 6pm, Brooke Lanier Fine Art, 201 South Camac Street, 4th Floor, Philadelphia, PA

PC: I’m excited to see your upcoming exhibition, Unintended Consequences. Can you explain
how the images in Unintended Consequences relate to the landscape historically? 

BL: I see these paintings and photographs as part of a larger art historical lineage that began in
the mid-1800’s and is still very relevant today. For instance, the Impressionists made paintings
that are now seen as merely pretty, colorful, and imbued with beautiful light, but if you look at
their subtext, the diffused light and color were caused by extreme air pollution from the
industrial revolution. Likewise, the landscapes in the show are quite beautiful and serene on the
surface, but they depict the continuing aftermath of industrialization and human impact on the
environment.

PC: How are the artists addressing climate change in Unintended Consequences?

BL: Jennifer Manzella’s prints of abandoned industrial building facades along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers are the first images viewers see when they walk into the show. They imply the environmental impact of industrialization. Diane Burko’s photographs from the Arctic Svalbard as well as Greenland’s Ilulissat Glacier and Ekaterina Popova’s watercolors of Skagaströnd, Iceland depict melting ice caps in the polar regions. Moving south, Geoffrey Agrons‘ photographs and my own watercolors depict shorelines destroyed by hurricanes and tropical storms. These are increasingly impactful, intersecting phenomena for densely populated coastal areas that are being developed at the same time that melting polar ice is causing sea levels to rise.

PC: How has climate change impacted your own work?

BL: I was making theoretical and abstract work until this past January when I visited my
grandmother in south Georgia. I had the opportunity to explore the coastline and marshes from southern Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida. Exploring eroded dunes in terrifyingly disorienting fog and tromping as close to the edge of the salt marshes as I could get without sinking in, I witnessed the destruction, change, and extreme erosion that hurricanes and tropical storms have wreaked onto the landscape during recent years.

I began to focus on the environmental impact of these events and the interaction between human destruction of the wetlands and the development of desirable beachfront communities. To accommodate mass development of coastlines, flood plains and wetland areas were paved over, decimating an important source of natural flood control. An ever increasing coastal population means that the impact of the storms on humans is much greater since so many people lose their homes and businesses. After seeing the immense impact of the hurricanes, I came back to Philadelphia and completely changed what I was making.

PC: It sounds like you had a deeply moving response to this experience and that your work
became more personal as well as more focused on social and environmental change.

BL: Yes.

PC: What would you like people to take away from Unintended Consequences?

BL: These images deal with the beauty in the details, but they evoke the sublime: a feeling of
being very small in the face of something very immense and powerful like a storm, the climate,
or how tiny one is compared to a glacier. I hope the viewers will think about their place in the
universe.

*For more information: Brooke Lanier Fine Art or brooke.lanier@gmail.com

Unintended Consequences https://www.facebook.com/events/1480508215410781/

Landscapes are a physical history of events that shaped them. In this exhibition, Geoffrey Agrons, Diane Burko, Brooke Lanier, Jennifer Manzella, and Ekaterina Popova raise questions about what events transpired that shape our current environment. The poetically unpopulated vistas in this exhibition subtly imply the lingering unintentional effects that humans have had on our planet in the wake of industrialization. Rather than being overly clinical or didactic, these images function as personal experiences of global phenomena.

Jennifer Manzella’s prints depict deserted urban landscapes, including vacant lots and derelict industrial buildings along the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. These structures, geometrically simplified silhouettes, have been forgotten in the wake of the decline of the American manufacturing industry. The empty spaces in her compositions are equally important as the vacant buildings.

Similarly, Geoffrey Agrons’ photographs feature mysterious structures such as the bones of piers along coastlines devastated by hurricanes. In much architecture there is an implicit assumption that we have dominion over our surroundings, but nature is unconquerable. Agrons has said that he only points his lens at something that breaks his heart, and indeed, there is a sense of melancholy and being lost in a vast space, trying to make sense of the aftermath.

The coastal areas in Brooke Lanier’s watercolors have been hit by multiple hurricanes in the past two years. Destruction of wetland wildlife habitats for real estate development exacerbates recurrent flooding. As warming oceans and melting glacial ice raise water levels, flooding from tropical storms has an increasingly devastating impact on highly populated coastal areas. Property highly sought after by vacationers and retirees is vulnerable to extreme weather. Carefully landscaped beaches are reshaped by storms and strewn with rubble.

Diane Burko’s photographs give a face to statistics, documenting of the regression of glacial ice. Burko accompanied climatologists to the Arctic Svalbard as well as Greenland’s Ilulissat Glacier to document the shrinking of polar ice over time. Her work contains an inquisitive quality that is also present Ekaterina Popova’s watercolors of Skagaströnd, Iceland. These images serve as visual proof, used for sharing a story once their creators return home.

The show is open to the public Tuesday through Friday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and by appointment. A brunch opening will be held on May 5th from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Join us for coffee, muffins, and conversation with the artists.

Thank you to Paula Cahill for the interview with Brooke Lanier. Extra content copied from the facebook event page.

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Marathon

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Plastic Club, Drawing Marathon

The Plastic Club, 247 South Camac St., Philadelphia, PA 19103, 215-545-9324

ALL-DAY DRAWING MARATHON at The Plastic Club

Do you want to upgrade or refresh your freehand drawing and painting skills? Come to the Plastic Club‘s annual all-day Drawing Marathon on Sunday, April 22. There will be sessions with monitors and models all day, from 10 AM to 10 PM, with subjects as varied as Life Drawing, Portrait Drawing & Painting, Long and Short Poses (“Croquis”), Still Life Setups, and High Contrast Lighting. Photography is not permitted, only drawing and painting.

The fee for the Marathon is $15, a “come-and-go-fee.” which will allow multiple entries and departures. There will be light snacks available, as well as lunch and dinner for a fee. So, drop by The Plastic Club, 247 Camac Street, the Avenue of the Artists, between 12th and 13th, and Locust and Spruce, on Sunday for an art skills upgrade.

Proceeds benefit Sunshine Arts, an artist in residence outreach program for kids.

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