Category Archives: Philadelphia Art Galleries

Philadelphia art galleries DoN has visited.

Joyce Chan and Mark Price at studio:christensen

Mark Price at studio:christensen

Mark Price at studio:christensen

According to artist Mark Price his artwork, “I guess it is collage but it’s from editions that I’ve been screen printing. The screen prints are from ink drawings and also design elements composited into these environments. Yeah, kind of revisiting all this material that you generate when you do screen printing, it’s a fast process as far as the hand printing goes, and as I was doing the editions, you know, I would give some away, but I still had a bunch left over. And started doing this thing of slicing them and with one single edition, collaging them, it almost feels like a stuttering of the image.  Or if you’re driving and the elongation of the landscape, like a pause repeated over and over.”

Mark Price at studio:christensen

Mark Price at studio:christensen

“This is the first time I’ve tried working with an edition as material as opposed to it being the end point.  It kind of reactivated how I was like thinking about it, like, ‘Oh man, this feels like it leaves the process a lot more open, like now the work is finished, the relationship with it is closed.  It was always like I enjoyed the process but once you get to the end instead of having an image that is clear one moment, to have an image that’s fragments of this memory or this other experience.  It’s all there but it’s like kind of fractured, or it’s like I remember it one way but it’s just this specific detail of it.”

Mark Price at studio:christensen

Mark Price at studio:christensen

The odd shapes of the artworks is intriguing, really breaking the bounds of the picture plane.  “I think that was a way to relieve the process, like the piece is still moving and the idea of, ‘Is this where the image ends or should I continue’. And also with abandoning 90 degree angles and the rigidness of it puts it in a place where it’s moving through three dimensional space.”

Mark Price at studio:christensen

Mark Price at studio:christensen

DoN commented to Mark that the art seems to glow from behind, the pieces are mounted away from the wall with pins, and wondered if the pastel glow was intentional? Mark Price said, “Well, it’s like collaging onto this material that has a fluorescence so it’s not so heavy, it’s like this thing that’s just hovering.  And with the drop shadow projecting a color it makes it different. I’m glad you picked that up.”

Joyce Chan at studio:christensen

Joyce Chan at studio:christensen

There’s a couple large monochromatic patterned paintings in the gallery by Joyce ChanDoN didn’t get to meet her, but the pairing of her quiet abstractions with Mark Price‘s vivid collage creates a kind of conversation between the artwork each speaking a similar but different language.

The studio/gallery/boutique on South 20th Street changes almost daily with pop-up shops by Hy/Lo, new aspirational furnishings, fashion shoots, art lectures and social events that there is always something new to see and desire.

Through SideArts.comDoN 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

Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Stephen Heigh, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Stephen Heigh, Sunday Morning Robots, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club ends on June 16th 2012, so if you want to see a collection of 77 amazing works of art, illustrations for books, magazine covers, advertising, self promotion, then you have to visit the Avenue of the Artists now.  To see illustrations in person is so different than what you see in print.  Often a book cover is from a large painting, the art for a magazine cover may be quadruple the actual size, many are masterful works of painting virtuosity not illustrations made on a computer with Illustrator.

And you get to visit amazing alternate realities, space adventures, scary crimes and romantic trysts through the eyes and imagination of professional artists.  Some of the art is by recent graduates from design school, especially from Moore College of Art & Design where Rich Harrington, the master-mind behind Phillustration V for the past five years, is a professor of illustration.  The artistic talent he gathers together each year is impressive creating the opportunity to view artwork not normally available to the public except as a commercial product like a book or magazine cover.

Glenn Zimmer, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Glenn Zimmer, Lost in the Tower of LondonPhillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Glenn Zimmer helped get members of the Bucks County Illustrators Society to submit work and deliver it to Philly.

Robert Byrd, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Robert Byrd, The Grand Plans and Vision, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club – click the thumbnail for a larger image but Robert Byrd‘s website is amazing!

Stephanie Struse, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Stephanie Struse, OwlPhillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Mike Manly, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Mike Manley, Judge Parker 5.2.2012Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Jennifer Villareale, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Jennifer Villareale, Finist the FalconPhillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

DoN featured this piece about the Moore 2012 graduate in a recent DoNArTNeWs blog post, it was especially satisfying to see the art in the historic gallery of  The Philadelphia Sketch Club. Again, for a good look at this image visit the artist’s website or the gallery while the show is on.

Stacy Hornung, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Stacy Hornung, Belly Up IPhillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

David Palumbo, Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

David Palumbo, Terrible WeaknessPhillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

The oil painting by David PalumboTerrible Weakness, is enormous, almost life sized, and evokes passion and emotion so skillfully that it’s scary.  The Phillustration V at The Philadelphia Sketch Club will blow your mind with the creativity, masterful skill and myriad styles of modern illustration and proves you don’t need a computer to be an illustrator.

Read about Phillustration IV on SideArts.com Philadelphia Art Blog

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer

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LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan explained to DoN the concept behind Primitive Level Signals, the spectacular multi-media exhibit at Dalet Gallery in Old City, “It’s an animation installation, it all uses 3D animation software to create the animations and we also have animation stills. Printed directly on the wood the prints use technology that is new, a new way to print on different materials, ridged materials, normally it must be much softer.  Now you can use hard wood or metal, aluminum…”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan explained, “Now I can print on all kinds of materials, not just paper. Also, the concept behind this is Chinese Taoism, what this means is that the Chinese have always dealt with five elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. All of the elements consistent with Nature is where the idea came from. Also my idea combines the ideas of the North American Indian people with ideas like the dream-catcher.”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

The gallery is filled with fascinating creations from the mind of LiQin Tan, there are prints on animal skin stretched in frames with industrial clamps paired with an abstract video on a glossy monitor mounted on the wall above the dream-catcher. “Using spirit levels as a signal to describe a natural phenomenon in humans, where human brain development is an equalized procedure.  The competing concepts of the brain, whether the battle of the brain’s size versus it’s intellectual capacity , or of it’s technological versus spiritual side, are always kept in equalibrium” –  Dalet Gallery art card.

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

The gallery displays five pairings of prints on wood with accompanying video like these three above to represent the five Taoist elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. The animation stills printed on the panels of wood are ethereal, with Max Ernst-like abstract images that evoking dreams, mind storms, underwater mysteries and the being lost in the deep forest.  The animations are mind-blowing in complexity and creativity.  In the front gallery is a series of monitors, tangles all in wires and cables, with an animated lava flow ebbing back and forth using video game technology realness to the point that the piece looks hot from melted stone.

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

“In this dream-catcher you see here, the animal skins, I made them by myself, is from the North American Indian people as well, they’re used in a way to represent their culture. I stole it from them. In the animation is the biggest stone, the spiritual stone.” said LiQin TanIn the picture above is a shot, a still if you will, of a large dream-catcher, the animal hide stretched taut in the primitive circular frame using the same cruel clamps, the installation has two of them. From both sides of the darkened gallery four video projectors shined animations onto the stretched skins, the light shining through like when you hold a flashlight to the web on your hand.  The animation includes dancing figures, “The Miao people, a small group of people in China, are represented by the dressed dancers…I mixed the cultures, I call it digital primitivism, using digital technology to make it primitive.”  The effect is deeply spiritual, connecting with memories, archetypes, cultural resonance and internally rooted thoughts and ideals.

“You can see that in the animation, but I also used the American Indian skills because I made the animal skins by myself. Using primitive skills, using calf skin, this kind of skin the procedure is called primitive, so I used the primitive skills to make them digital.  And I used digital skills to make primitive art.”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

“It’s a two-way work, digital art with old society and modern society, it’s multi-faceted.  I like the North American Indian culture a lot. I did a lot of research in Canada and I made a lot of multimedia pieces about North American Indian culture, so it’s about how during the day I teach digital animation but I have North American Indian culture in my brain. So the idea came very easy, very natural especially when it connected with Chinese Taoism, I did a lot of research, I’m not a religious person but I read a lot of philosophy and a lot of the research is organized in this idea.”

LiQin TanPrimitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery through June 23rd.

Written and photographed by DoN

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Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley TomlinsonMoore College of Art & Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art & Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Artist, Hayley Tomlinson‘s installation at the Galleries at Moore for the Senior Show was grand in every way from concept to execution to presentation.  The artist made a splash with her needle point award ribbons in the Philadelphia art blogs last year, her use of an old fashioned technology like crochet or needlepoint mashed into modern social networking is an on point comment on how information spreads.  The information stored in knitting is powerful; fabric is a metaphor for storing information.  Scan the QRCode in one of her fabric iPads and it will take you to her website.  Hayley Tomlinson‘s senior thesis from Moore College of Art & Design, her degree is 3D Fine Arts, also takes on the fame side of art with an homage to Jeff Koons and the information stored in balloon dogs.

“My paper is about artists that I envy and who I want to be like one day.  But, I’m also kind of  jealous because of the money that they have and I really want to be rich and famous.”

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley TomlinsonMoore College of Art & Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley Tomlinson graduated magna cum laude and already has a job as a graphic designer in Philadelphia.  She told DoN, “Now that I have this full time job I can find a way to support my separate art career. So, I guess we’ll see, I’m moving to a new place, starting a new job, I need to organize myself and figure out what I want to make.  I won the Blick Art Award so I want to go to Blick Art Materials and buy a lot of markers and paper and draw things and see where that takes me.”

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley TomlinsonMoore College of Art & Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley Tomlinson, Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

Hayley TomlinsonMoore College of Art & Design Senior Exhibit 2012

“I made the bunny as the poor man’s Jeff Koons, it’s stuffed and I made it myself and I can’t pay other people to make it for me.  So it’s stuff that’s very soft, I put it on cement blocks because I can’t have a concrete pedestal like Jeff Koons can.  The iPads I made are also about envy, it’s more focussed on things I have a love/hate relationship with and that like, ‘I hate myself for loving these things’.  So, I’m going to keep working with those ideas that I make.”

“I’ve got a degree, I’ve got a job, I’ve got ideas in my head, so, it will be good.”

Read more about Hayley Tomlinson:

Art Blog

Blog Art

Written & photographed by DoN 

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PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, Emily Brown, An Early Thaw

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensenEmily Brown, An Early Thaw, lithograph

“There’s a mix of people here, some are younger or mid-career.  Some of them have never made a print before, it’s their first print, and there’s a great mix of people.”  PHILAGRAfiKA director and curator Cindi Ettinger said to DoN during the opening reception for Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, 333 South 20th Street.

DoN recalled  PHILAGRAfiKA coming into existence while he studied at the University of the Arts in the early 21st Century. “Philagrafika was originally the Philadelphia Print Collaborative which was a consortium of all the different organizations in Philadelphia that were involved with print-making. And then it evolved to become Philagrafika which the goal was more about festivals, printmaking and how it could be used outside the box.”

“Now, after that major festival we’re kind of scaling back and starting over, reincarnating ourselves and we are having a lecture series and have events and projects in other cities and international.  So, we’re getting started all over again, right now.”  DoN inquired about the connection with the chic gallery near Rittenhouse Square and Cindi explained that a member of their board is friends with Jt Christensen, the designer behind the storefront gallery/design studio. “What’s nice about this is it’s very low key and we found that the best way you can reincarnate yourself is to start small and gradually get really, really good people together and have it be much more organic.  Have it be an organic process, so that’s what we’re doing.”

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, Eric Avery, Paradise Lost

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensenEric Avery, Paradise Lost, four color chiaroscuro print on Okawara paper.

Eric Avery‘sParadise Lost describes the fourteen major infections of Adam and Eve, diseases specific to humans.  The technical virtuosity and exquisite information design is masterful, the narrative deep and disturbing, the presentation at once decorative and discrete. “Most of the major human infectious diseases, including some confined to humans and absent from animals, are “new” ones that arose only after the advent of agriculture.”  Can you think of one major disease specific to you as a human being?

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, Judith Schaechter, Child Bride

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints @ studio:christensenJudith Schaechter, Child Bride, two color linocut on Somerset paper.

DoN asked about the famed stained glass artist, Judith Schaechter‘s, affiliation with PHILAGRAfiKA?  “She was involved in the first portfolio and you know, she was happy to do it.”  There was a schedule conflict that evening as the artist unveiled her spectacular new windows at The Eastern State Penitentiary.

PHILAGRAfiKA is developing a 2012 portfolio, we’re just getting the artists chosen and by the end of the month will be announced on the 31st. Philagrafika is alive and well.” said Cindi Ettinger, a master printer who worked with most of the artists in the exhibit, coordinating with major print firms and universities to bring the show to life.

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, Nami Yamamoto

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensenNami Yamamoto, Miniature Garden: Trace, pigmented over beaten bleached abaca with watermark.

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensen, Jennifer Levonian

PHILAGRAfiKA Invitational Portfolio Prints at studio:christensenJennifer Levonian, July in Philadelphia, digital print with dye cut.

May 31st, 6:00 pm at studio:christensen is a lecture entitled Natural Discourse, with Mary Ann Friel and Nami Yamamoto find out more how to register at the Philagrafika FaceBook Page.

Written and photographed by DoN

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