Category Archives: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

Painting Buenos Aires, Charles Cushing’s Kickstarter.com Campaign

Tango Dancing in Rittenhouse Square, oil on canvas, Charles Cushing

Charles Cushing imagined a compelling idea for a Kickstarter.com campaign, the popular website to help crowd fund artists projects, he is traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina to paint the tango culture. Charles is a well-known Philadelphia painter and has traveled to paint plein air many times in many places but an extended stay in South America to absorb and paint the vibrant culture has expenses. That’s where Kickstarter.com helps artists raise money to realize their ambition but a short video is required, a confounding but good idea because the campaigner has to focus the idea and then sell the concept to the public. Charles Cushing‘s project is titled Painting Buenos Aires and is now an approved project on Kickstarter.com.

Charles Cushing approached DoN about his idea and we agreed to produce the video together using his concepts and DoN’s direction including an art studio interview, plein air painting in the Italian Market and tango dancing on Passyunk Avenue to be edited with stills of his paintings over a soundtrack. Making movies can be a lot of fun with creative hard work, problem solving, lots of detail and of course a deadline. Painting Buenos Aires was conceived, videoed and edited in less than three weeks; the narrative was extracted from the interview movie using GarageBand, exported to iTunes as a song, imported into iMovie as a soundtrack and an hour of HD video footage was edited down to four minutes and fourteen seconds. Getting lost in video editing using all the elements and information design is like weaving or drawing, trying to get the story to emerge coherently can be a challenge. Especially with artists who can be self conscious of their image. But, Charles gave DoN freedom and trust.

Editing decisions were left up to DoN, Charles made very few requests to edit and all interactions and iterations were communicated through YouTube updates. The original cut had a full two minute street tango dance scene with narration, it’s beautiful. But the final cut of Painting Buenos Aires breaks that up with vignettes of art and painting. Shooting the dance scene at the fountain plaza on Passyunk Avenue will always be a favorite memory. The Philly folks on the plaza were so cool, even though it was about ninety degrees in the afternoon sun, as we shot video of Charles and his Tango partner, Grace Lee, dancing for about twenty minutes. Only one street person thought he was Len Goodman and offered advise on their dance moves.

Please support Charles Cushing‘s Painting Buenos Aires Kickstarter.com campaign and visit the site to view our movie.

Written by DoN Brewer

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

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Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club’s Stewart Room Gallery

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Kojak, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

The member show in the Stewart Room Gallery of The Philadelphia Sketch Club is a coveted spot to exhibit solo art shows. The art team Anthony C and Karen M, long time active members of America’s oldest artist run art club are the featured artists for July and are breaking new ground artistically in the historic space because the show is team artwork and street based in style. Street art is a big part of Karen M and Anthony C’s art platform including free art, mail art, stickers and graffiti. Karen M talked about the content of the expansive show while we walked around the grand pool table. “This is a body of work that is about two years in the making. Along with our other projects. We always seem to be doing iconic images and popular culture, we reference things we like and things we think are important. And things that have messages.” said Karen M.

Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

“Each piece is cut with an X-ACTO, sprayed onto canvas, each piece is unique because you can’t spray it the same every time.” Some of the pieces are familiar from other exhibitions, I wondered how much work was recent? The Mona Lisa is especially memorable.”Only one or two were in other shows. This is new. We always work. We always have projects going and then when an opportunity come up for a show, we’ll go to our inventory and pick what we think would be appropriate. Now, with the Stewart Room, we know with The Philadelphia Sketch Club, it’s very traditional, a lot of people from PAFA and we wanted to do something that no one has ever seen.”

Green Cash, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

“So, we have fifty-one pieces here and we did the installation so that you come in and it’s all fresh paint. There might be criticism from hardened graffiti writers who say you’re selling out when your putting it on canvas. But, as I was talking to a Miami based graffiti writer, graffiti is evolving, and we have the stencil so there is no problem if we want to spray it somewhere else. If you know what I mean?” Playing dumb, like what? Karen M said, “Sidewalks, we don’t vandalize, we don’t spray on personal property but if something’s dilapidated or boarded up, that’s fair game.” That’s what graffiti is. But Anthony C and Karen M approach the style as a way of communicating with an audience of their peers and collectors who gather their work from the street or buy it in a gallery. Karen M says, “Modern graffiti started in Philadelphia and then spread to New York. It started with Cornbread. Who we had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of years ago when the documentary about him debuted. And he said he was just in a detention center and always broke the balls of the cook because we wanted cornbread and they didn’t have it. So the name stuck. When he got out, he liked this girl, so he wanted to get her to notice him, so he looked at the transit route that she rode and he wrote his name at every stop.”

Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

“So he just wrote, Cornbread and then eventually Chewy joined him and the birthplace of graffiti is Philadelphia and then it moved up into New York and it evolved and they did the trains, and people went all city. And then it went from just tagging to bombing and pieces. And now graffiti has evolved so much that there’s even graffiti classes, there’s legal walls, maybe some companies would want to hire a graffiti writer to advertise on the side of their store.” Another local graffiti artist NoseGo just did a building on 5th Street near South. “We know him from a gallery called Rare Breed that was one of the first graffiti galleries in back in the day. It was on 15th Street. A lot of writers gathered there, a lot of them knew each other from there, he sold paint, he sold markers, he sold videos, books…and it was a really good gathering ground for people that were doing work.”

The Cry, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

The array of pop icons, cultural figures and persistent images presents the question of how to decide what to paint? Karen M said, “It’s intuitive. We’re influenced by punk rock, hip hop, Andy Warhol, Blek LaRat from Paris, the Godfather of street art, he’s done wheat pastes and stencils, he’s just wonderful. He saw all the rats of the city of Paris, so he started to stencils of them and we think he’s just wonderful, the Godfather of street art. Gotta give props to Blek and Cornbread.”

Chem Warfare Copper, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

The absence of color is obvious with crisp white canvasses each offering a unique stencil and maybe a spurt of spray paint. “If you do a stencil on a wall or tag, it is usually just the flat black Rust-Oleum Flat Black is the pinnacle of graffiti paint. Now, they’ve got all kinds of crazy colors, there’s paint coming from Spain, all over the world, but, the true graffiti writers use the flat black Rustoleum. So we stay in that tradition.”

Sid, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

The exhibit is arranged thematically with pop icons, famous images and characters grouped loosely. “It’s a juxtaposition, we wanted people to say you really didn’t have the balls to do the Mona Lisa, did you? Yes, we drew the Mona Lisa and John Lennon, iconic for our time. On this wall we have Redd Foxx and on the opposite wall we have Malcolm X. And they were together when they were hoodlums and they both made such an impact on our culture: Redd Foxx eventually becoming iconic, comedian, television character and Malcolm X the leader of the Nation of Islam. And, we love to juxtapose images, we don’t do it with any rhyme or reason going back to when they put together the words hydrogen jukebox. We just juxtapose base on our intuition and design of the piece. So, the show was hung rather quickly and without too much…thinking about definite placement, we did it intuitively.” One grouping of characters appears to be all sociopaths. “We’re drawn to the darker side, we’re drawn to the sociopaths and the crazies, we like that. In pop culture and our friends.”

Eraserhead, Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

Karen M says, “We push the envelop. And we want to be known, well, we’re basically political artists. As any graffiti artist, when they put their name on the wall, that’s a political statement. I got interested in graffiti in the late seventies and the earlt eighties when I went to Mexico and there was the conflict in El Salvador. And every wall that had a space, had political graffiti about getting America out of El Salvador and to me that just sparks in me a love for the art which I carry to this day.”

“David Lynch is a big influence. When I was at Philadelphia College of Art we had a great film teacher, Dr. Ruth Pearlmutter, and showed us Eraserhead and I believe it was when it was first released and I just wrote pages and pages on the film. Anthony and I, my collaborator, are big fans of David Lynch. You can even see some of the influence on our YouTube channel and just the image of Henry with his hair all backlit looking all crazy just made a perfect stencil.”

Fresh Paint, Anthony C and Karen M in The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s Stewart Room Gallery

Read more about Anthony C and Karen M at SideArts.com Philadelphia Art Blog. New SideArts.com post here.

Anthony C and Karen M on SideArts.com

Anthony C and Karen M YouTube channel

Anthony C and Karen M on MySpace

Follow Anthony C and Karen M on Twitter @anthonygraffart

Through SideArts.com, DoN is offering online and in-person one-on-one consulting services to visual and craft artists and art businesses. Read all about it here.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

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W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery

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Cochlea by W.G. Middleton, James Harmon, Dr. Mindy George Weinstein, glass, acrylic, wire, 22x22x32″, W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery

DoN asked William G. Middleton about the eclectic mix of classical figurative sculptures with the eye-popping abstract mixed media pieces representing microscopic anatomy details? “It’s interesting. I’ve been doing this classical stuff for probably forty years. That’s how I went to art school, because I was doing that.” W.G. Middleton attended PAFA. “I got into it and I never did another classical piece of sculpture. For one thing, I was much older than a lot of the people in sculpture. So, they could afford to take year to do a piece, which is what it takes to do a mold and pour bronze. I said, ‘You know, I really don’t have that kind of time‘.”

W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery

“I turned to abstract sculpture, which was much more fun because you can sit around and think about it and it would evolve. And, so, that’s where I went for a long time but I’ve always liked to do classical pieces, you know?” DoN knows Bill from figure study workshops at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, his drawing skills are formidable. “I got away from doing those, I did one recently but that’s about it. Then, part of the evolution of doing these was in school I was studying how things worked in the body. I just kept going and going until I got to the microscopic level.”

W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery

“In classical works there are portions that are common – there are either seven or eight heads, there’s three heads to the belly button, there’s a direct proportion – well, in the interior stuff, there’s no relation to anything. But, it’s still basically form following function and it’s a totally different beauty involved. But, it all works for the same reason. I realized one day, it’s interesting I’ve gone from classical, totally different stuff, but it’s still in the body, it relates to the body.”

The dramatic sculpture in the window of Twenty-Two Gallery looks like found objects but Middleton explained, “No, it Boorman’s Space and the loop of Henle, so when blood comes in through here, it’s separated out, urine is separated out. It’s not forced, it’s a balance of fluids through a filter and then the blood continues down through the loop of Henle where it is again extracted comes around here and then actually the blood takes back certain things it needs. This is in the kidney, a pretty complex thing.”

W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery, Edy, clay, 19x17x20″

Retina, W.G. Middleton, James Harmon, Dr. Mindy George Weinstein, glass, acrylic, wire, 48x7x20″, W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery

Retina, a dazzling complex sculpture on a dramatic black platform, is a combination of glass, plexiglass and light, “It’s actually a replica of how the cell in the retina works. The colors come in and then they separate out and then they’re separated and sent to the brain through the rods and cones. The primary colors are the rods, and the cones are complementary. It’s interesting, it goes to the brain and is reconstructed but in a different image based on memories, so your experiences aren’t based on what you’re seeing. What you’re seeing and what I’m seeing are totally different. You don’t realize it, but…”

W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery through May 6, 2012.

Photographed and written by DoN Brewer

Linda Lee Alter, 2012 First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award Honoree

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Linda Lee Alter, First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award for an Outstanding Arts Collaborator Honoree

March 28th 2012, The Center for Emerging Visual Artists hosted their 10th Annual Benefit Auction at the University of the Arts, a swanky affair with wonderful art and experiences up for auction to generate operating revenue for the non-profit organization dedicated to emeging Philadelphia artists. The grand hall was beautifully decorated with flowers and saffron colored lanterns and umbrellas, the smells of barbecue and mac-n-cheese wafted through the crowd enticing them to eat while browsing the auction items. But before the big auction, artist Linda Lee Alter was presented with the First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award for an Outstanding Arts Collaborator and renowned art connoisseur and curator Eileen Tognini presented the award, a lovely equine sculpture by artist Julia Stratton.

Eileen Tognini, Julia Stratton and Linda Lee Alter at First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award for an Outstanding Arts Collaborator Honoree presentation.

Eileen Tognini presented the award, she has been an artistic advisor to CFEVA since 2008 and this year was the chair of the Founder’s Award committee. Eileen addressed the audience, “Welcome, it’s so wonderful to see so many friends of CFEVA this evening. Thank you so much. As much as this event is about fund-raising, it’s also about celebrating the community of talented artists, acknowledging those who determine that their legacy is one steeped in supporting the artists journey. Without the passion and dedication, these individuals, to recognize their support of not only artists but also the broader community and it’s beneficiaries. The introduction of the Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award for an Outstanding Arts Collaborator is seen as a genuine desire to honor an individual who actively supports artists and their careers through a commitment to collecting, exhibiting and philanthropic activities. The award has been established in the spirit of the ideals and mission and her own passion that Bebe set forth when she founded the Creative Artists Network, now CFEVA, nearly thirty years ago”

“Each year a CFEVA alum or current fellow will be selected to create this award through a CFEVA stipend and be recognized at this event alongside our honoree…this First Founder’s Award was created by CFEVA alum Julia Stratton. Julia attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, graduating 1994 with honors…”

Center for Emerging Visual Artists 10th Annual Benefit Auction at University of the Arts

“…coincidently, Julia and I are not strangers to one another , yet neither one knew of each other’s participation in this honor, so the magic is even more meaningful. Our honoree, Linda Lee Alter was born and raised in Philadelphia and has been a working artist for over fifty years. Starting her career as a fibers artist creating large scale work. Lee’s artwork is represented in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States and in 2008 the Allentown Art Museum held a retrospective exhibition of Lee’s work.”

“In addition to creating her own work, Lee has made it her mission to help other women artists. In the mid 1980s, she began to collect art by women with the goal of building a collection that would be of interest to museums. Lee’s intention was to donate the collection to an institution that was enthusiastic about increasing it’s representation of art by women. As a way to help women’s art become more visible and recognized, and better appreciated. In 2010, Lee gave the collection to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1991, Lee started a non-profit foundation to fill a need that she felt was unmet by other local foundations. The Leeway Foundation supported women in art by making grants to individual women artists living in the Philadelphia Region.”

Eileen Tognini concluded, “Today, The Leeway Foundation is a community led foundation supporting women and trans artists, creating social change in the Delaware Valley Region. To be standing here in front of all of you introducing an individual who possesses both vision and passion, it is truly both an inspiration and a sincere honor for me. I would like to present the 2012 First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award to Lee Alter.”

After a rousing round of applause, Linda Lee Alter said, “Thank you very much, I admired Bebe very much for her commitment to emerging artists and even more for the kind of person she was. I feel very fortunate to have known her and to have had our lives overlap one another. I knew Bebe a long time ago and she was an inspiration then to me and she continues to inspire me. So, this award has very special meaning. And Julia Stratton‘s sculpture is a beautiful symbol of the Bebe award. I believe that for every happening, every action, everything, is the result of the contribution of a lot of people. I certainly feel that about my own efforts in the arts and it’s in that way that I feel very grateful for this award and I accept it with many thanks. Thank you all vey much.”

Center for Emerging Visual Artists 10th Annual Benefit Auction at University of the Arts

CFEVA 2012 Signature Cocktail: Orange Hurricane

1 oz. Bacardi 0
1 oz. Bacardi 8-year dark rum
1 oz. Triple Sec
3 oz. Orange Juice
3 oz. Pineapple Juice
1/2 oz. Grenadine

Mix above ingredients; pour over ice into a Hurricane glass. Add a splash of Club Soda. Garnish with Orange Slice and Maraschino Cherry. (Small umbrella optional.)

Heavy Bubble was in the house at 2012 First Annual Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award and 10th Annual CFEVA Benefit Auction.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer, DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve – Images from Eraserhood

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Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve – Images from Eraserhood

The Photographic Society of Philadelphia‘s current solo show is photographer and blogger Bob Bruhin, at the reception in the comfy Cafe Twelve, 212 S. 12th Street, Bob explained to a group of society members his collection of photographs. “This is a small selection that I call Images from the Eraserhood, it’s photos that were taken originally for my blog eraserhood.com, which is discussing the neighborhood North of Vine Street, South of Spring Garden Street, East of Broad Street and West of 7th or 8th depending on how you determine it. It’s an historically industrial neighborhood that used to have the Reading Railroad running through it, there a big old thing called the Reading Viaduct which was where the railroad ran before they built commuter tunnels. It’s filled with old industrial properties, beautiful stunning buildings. In the mid to late 60’s the artist David Lynch lived there, he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy and the geography and the look and the tone of that neighborhood of that time inspired his first feature film entitled Eraserhead (Import, All Regions). So recently as the neighborhood has developed it’s taken on the name Eraserhood, it kind of stuck to the neighborhood,”

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve – Images from Eraserhood

“All that fascinated me when I came to work there, I work in a building called the Wolf Building which is an emblem of the factories and condos and offices and apartments, all manner of things. Rick Wright has his studio in that building. At the time I was originally photographing only using a cell phone, so what I was doing was taking composite images panoramically, specifically to build up a large enough image to make it worth the trouble. Eventually I found it amusing enough that I started to use a real small Nikon point and shoot, a simple Nikon Coolpix L20 10MP Digital Camera. But since I became addicted to the panoramic process at that point, I continued to do that and started building larger images, I worked with exposure stacking and high dynamic range to intensify the color and textures of the images.”

Bob Bruhin at Cafe Twelve – Images from Eraserhood

“So it’s kind of an historical study but it’s supposed to be a bit of a twisted historical study just because of the twisted history of the neighborhood, the tone of David Lynch‘s work kind of inspired that. I was further inspired by the fact that it is now a National Historic Landmark called the Callowhill Historic District which has all of these buildings in this show are from the Callowhill Historic District set…these have all been done with the panoramic process and have been enhanced with exposure stacking and high dynamic range. I bracket all my exposures and combine them digitally at the end wih a more even exposure and also to capture all the texture that I can possibly capture.”

All photographs courtesy of the artist, Bob Bruhin:
– http://bob-bruhin.com/
– http://eraserhood.com/
– http://LandMarrx.com/
Read other reviews of PSoP photographer Karen Schlechter on DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog and Jeff Stroud on Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog