Category Archives: Philadelphia Art Alliances

Philadelphia groups of artists working together to dreate opportunities for exhibitions, information sharing and support.

DiPrinzio & Son @ Da Vinci Art Alliance

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Grotesque Profile / Dean’s Song, Michael DiPrinzio @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.

Michael DiPrinzio encourages his son, Dean, age 5, to grab some art supplies and work with his Dad in the studio while he creates his abstract expressionist /naive primitivist paintings. Unlike the Philly Dad who let’s his kid swig beer at a ball game, DiPrinzio is familiarizing Dean with the arts and culture of all kinds – Dean was a cool art star at the opening, drawing and posing for pictures. DiPrinzio the Younger’s work was hung on clothes pins scattered around the gallery among DiPrinzio the Elder’s paintings. Seeing familiar household objects and surfaces incorporated into DiPrinzio’s dream-scapes plucks on childhood nerves like time traveling back to a younger day when a clothes-pin was the coolest thing ever.

Michael DiPrinzio, Give Thanks, A Heart Felt Toast @ Da Vinci Art Gallery in South Philly.

Michael DiPrinzio, Year of the Rat @ Da Vinci Art Alliance.

Dinosaur by Dean DiPrinzio, crayon on ceiling tile. Having a kid’s art perspective bouncing off the adult abstractions creates a vibration between childish mark-making and child-like abandon.

With Dali-esque coloration, Michael DiPrinzio gets down & dirty with this large scale mixed media painting, the paint battles across the canvas, mixing like a wacko fractal model.

Learn more about the DiPrinzio family project @ the Da Vinci Art Alliance website including info on Daniel DiPrinzio‘s novel, “New U“.

Untitled, Michael DiPrinzio @ Da Vinci Art Alliance @ 7th & Catharine Streets. The gallery is a hidden gem in South Philly, offering artists the opportunity to have one-person or group shows along with themed members only exhibits throughout the year. Just a few blocks from The Italian Market, Da Vinci Art Alliance offers contemporary art in a lovely town-house gallery across the street from Fleisher Art Memorial.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.com

Light & Despair @ Twenty-Two Gallery – Valerie Carroll & Adrienne Jenkins

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Valerie Carroll, Spot @ Twenty-Two Gallery.

Valerie Carroll‘s animistic portraits of cats & dogs practically growl with aggression, daring DoN to stare down scary faces like monsters in a dream. Sometimes when DoN looks into KaTy the ArT DoGs eyes he feels a connection with her like some extrasensory perception mind meld is happening, Carroll’s paintings tap into that same vibe. Carroll’s animal portraits are classic mise en scene animal portraits yet brutalist and difficult like a great punk rock song.

Valerie Carroll, Rub-a-Dub, A Man in a Tub, oil on canvas.

Valerie Carroll explained how she first got this impression of the bathing man while out West but finished the painting back East. The painting pulses with emotion, the man’s facial expression roils with desperation, the luxury of a bath too sad to believe, a beard grown wild, a rusted basin a momentary respite from the New Great Depression.

Valerie Carroll, Man in a Pink Shirt, oil on canvas. Light & Despair @ Twenty-Two Gallery.

Adrienne Jenkins, Jamie, oil on canvas @ Twenty-Two Gallery.

Shawn Murray, Twenty-Two Gallery’s mastermind, warned Adrienne Jenkins that portraits are a hard sell but her paintings of twenty-somethings reveal such a current state of being for young people – harried, a bit grim, self absorbed like characters from a William Faulkner novel set in the future – that it makes DoN glad she ignored his advice, the portraits are so painterly they don’t read as so specific.

Twenty-Two Gallery’s co-curator , Diane Podolsky, has the balls to mix up impressionist still life paintings with stylized portraits and crazed pet paintings & makes it work like some museum show of the history of modern art; paintings just never go out of style.

Valerie Carroll & Adrienne Jenkins at the opening of their show, Light and Despair @ Twenty-Two Gallery during West Center City’s Second Friday art crawl. The two artists paint together at Wayne Art Center , sharing studio space and creating a kind of cross-pollination of painting styles. With 25 or so paintings, this is a big show for two artists but Adrienne Jenkins is preparing for her solo show next year for the same space; the two artists have joined the artist collective and you can meet them this Sunday afternoon at Twenty-Two Gallery, 236 South 22nd Street.

Photos by DoNBrewerPhotography.

The Plastic Club’s 2010 Members’ Medals Show

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While Alan Klawans, the Exhibitions Chair of The Plastic Club, awarded honors for the excellent Black & White show, DoN observed sunlight creeping across Vetiado # 48, a mixed media painting by Louisa Velben. The painting glittered as if diamonds are embedded in the surface but the illusion was shiny paint bubbles in the thickly painted and swirled liquid.

Pulled From The Darkness, Erik Melendez, charcoal.

Karl Richard Olsen, Portrait, graphite. Bill Meyers, of PSoP, volunteer posed at the Plastic Club, the likeness is striking yet loose and free.

Rebecca Miller, Overrripe: Compost 3, graphite. Miller is completing the Master program @ PAFA, studying with the extraordinary Scott Noel; this piece was created by drawing on gessoed board, draw with graphite, layer watered gesso over the drawing, let dry, draw some more…the result is an award winning drawing. Miller also took home a prize the same day from The Philadelphia Sketch Club for an oil painting. Seeing young new talent emerging from local art schools with the skill of masters participating in the grass roots arts movement in Philly is extremely satisfying.

Alden Cole, Dancing in the Dark, pencil and Leroy Fornoy, Night Bus, oil. Pairing these two graphic pieces is genius – Cole’s trippy Starlings dance ecstatically and Fornoy’s painting has a Manga skate-punk nihilist vibe.

One of the great aspects of this show is the variety of media displayed, now that photography is accepted in the art circles as a legitimate art form, many Photographic Society of Philadelphia members have the opportunity to show with their work along side traditional media – some photographers even entered paintings!

Arthur Ostroff, Floreal Ancienne, ink jet print.

Riikka Salo, Windows to Spruce, photograph.

Lois Schlachter, Exhibitions Chair of The Philadelphia Sketch Club, and Alan Klawans, Exhibitions Chair of The Plastic Club, at the Black & White Show. The Philadelphia Sketch Club opened their 147th Annual Exhibitions of Small Oil Paintings the same afternoon – between the two art clubs there are over 300 new art works by contemporary Philadelphia area artists to see. The juxtaposition of two strong theme shows is visually and psychologically invigorating, one show is limited to size and medium, the other limited to no color, the problem-solving and creativity of the artists is inspiring, entertaining and lucid.

Photography by DoNBrewerPhotography.

147th Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings @ The Philadelphia Sketch Club

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James Dean Erickson, Portrait of Douglass Carr, oil on board. The model in cap & hoddie can be found wheel-chair bound outside St. John’s, a diabetic, a friend recommended the artist invite him into the studio to pose at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. James relayed to DoN, “Portraiture can be a vehicle for therapy, highlights the dignity of the individual, and be a channel for excitement and energy.”

Rachel Constantine, Fifteen, oil. The title says it all.

Richard Coach, The Fish of Delos.

Like time traveling to a lost and ancient city, this painting could be anywhere in time and space. Seething with hunger for life, referencing work, culture, taste, serving up skills acquired with trial & error, the exquisite painting and substantial frame is right here in Philly in America’s oldest art club, the Philadelphia Sketch Club.

Kyle Margiotta, Blow, oil. This would be a great picture for a house with kids, imagine how this masterful painting would elevate the taste of growing minds, simple mark-making telling long stories playing out like fairytales, set in the real world, incredulous expressions speaking volumes.

Mark Brough Goodson, Tom Csaszar/Eye of the Critic and Neysa Grassi/Eye of the Critic.

The pair of pairs of eyes, attractive and expressive, are superb examples of how small paintings capture moments in time, filled with emotions, thought and empathy in a medium which will last for centuries. Hundreds of years from now the oil paintings being produced now will still transmit stories from our time, the present, to the future, their past.

DoN overheard a man say, “Why don’t they say where these places are?” DoN pointed out the title does name a place, “Snow Melt, Sand Island“, by Sandra Corpora, it just doesn’t give GPS coordinates. The man asked DoN what he liked about the painting? “The restraint of using the one thick pure white stroke of paint to represent the most distant point in the painting.” He looked hard @ DoN & disappeared into the crowd.

147th Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings is through April 24th with 170 of the best oil paintings in the city hanging together, continuing a long history of excellence in contemporary oil painting.

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DoNArTNeWs

Philadelphia Art News Blog by DoN Brewer