Category Archives: Philadelphia Art Schools

Philadelphia art schools.

Life’s a Drag

Life’s a Drag, Drag Performance and the Taboos of Femininity, Kate Brazina

Performance by Icon Ebony Fierce, Porcelain and Ann Artist, photography by Michael Valtin, video by Kate Brazina at Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibition 2013.

“The evolution of drag has it’s first recorded roots in the Thirteenth Century Theater and now is widespread on various platforms such as film, television, underground theater and nightclubs.” – Kate Brazina

Life’s a Drag stands out among great art installations at the Moore College of Art Senior Show because of the manipulation of context, situation, audience, history and future of public art installations. In a Warhol-ized world, art curators seek that cultural awareness nerve that will signal something is different, strange or unknown that can be discovered. The presence of three high profile Philadelphia drag queens along side the graduating class of 2013 of America’s only women’s art school was disorienting and fabulous.

Life’s a Drag, Drag Performance and the Taboos of Femininity, Porcelain

Through facebook messaging DoN asked Kate Brazina some questions: Moore College of Art is a unique institution for women. Did your investigation into drag culture have anything to do with the school’s signification of women as separate? Is your work impacted by the male gaze?

“My interest in drag culture mostly came about because I work in nightlife with a lot of queens. But, my interest in feminism and femininity definitely came from my time at Moore.”

“Moving forward through the next 800 years drag has become a progressive form of entertainment and integral part of the gay community catering to people of all walks of life.” – Kate Brazina artist statement.

Life’s a Drag, Drag Performance and the Taboos of Femininity, Kate Brazina, Ann Artist, Moore College of Art Senior Exhibition.

“My work has a lot to do with the male gaze and playing with comfort zones.”

Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses a degree of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object. This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage, in which a child encountering a mirror realizes that he or she has an external appearance. Lacan suggests that this gaze effect can similarly be produced by any conceivable object such as a chair or a television screen. This is not to say that the object behaves optically as a mirror; instead it means that the awareness of any object can induce an awareness of also being an object. – Wikipedia

Life’s a Drag, Drag Performance and the Taboos of Femininity, Kate Brazina at Moore College of Art Senior Exhibition

Kate Brazina has tapped the zeitgeist of the gender-fuck cross-dresser as a meme for rebellion in the larger context of society in a powerful and appealing presentation including the prerequisite chairs, TVs and drag queens, the metaphorical psychological mirror.

DoN remembers watching Milton Berle on a black and white TV in the 50s prance and sissy it up in a funny sexualized way. This week America’s Next Drag Superstar, Jinkx Monsoon, was crowned on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5, a cable TV reality competition show exposing many of drag’s secrets to a curious audience. RuPaul said in a recent interview that the biggest audience for her product line is teenaged girls. Impersonating women in an all girl’s school takes, as Rupaul would say, charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Condragulations Kate Brazina.

ps. DoN‘s drag name is Gayla Dolly.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer except where noted.

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Bike (PH)ix by Corrina Mehiel

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Bike (PH)ix by Corrina Mehiel, photo by Bonnie Schorske

Corrina Mehiel is half way through the Masters Degree Program in Studio Arts at the University of the Arts, a program lasting almost three years and is independently driven with 45 artists from all over the world. Corrina explained her public art project, Bike (PH)ix this way, “I am interested in the unspoken social conversation that’s going on. In each city there’s a different kind of conversation happening. I moved here last June and I had been to Philly a couple times but not really that much. I was really struck by the amount of stuff existing on the street and the street life here. People that are existing with objects that are either this kind of free-cycle thing that happens in Philly where people just take stuff but in other cities it’s taken to a donation center.”

Bike (PH)ix by Corrina Mehiel

“Here it’s just outside your door. It’s like this unwritten code about that ‘it’s fine to just take things’ and then beyond that it seems that almost theft is acceptable here. Just this culture that the bikes get stripped and people don’t come back to get the parts and students coming out of the university just leave their bicycles when they go back home, so, to me the city is talking about a kind of detachment or something. In other places I’ve lived humans have such a strong object attachment and our identities are so wrapped up in our objects. Things that we are about, you know?”

Bike (PH)ix by Corrina Mehiel, photo by Bonnie Schorske

“So, I’ve been thinking about these street objects – non-functional street objects like bikes, pay phones that don’t have phones, newspaper boxes with no newspapers, all these things that sort of exist here, that are permanent, I felt like,’Well? I guess they just exist.’, so, I never would have imagined the City would remove these bike frames. I was looking at them, thinking about it, thinking about it and then I did some work related to this, a sticker book collection, I did ink paintings of these objects as stickers sort of questioning where do these things belong. We know the function but they don’t have a function. I made a book, a typical book, referencing a coloring book or a book from childhood that would be blank outlines recognizable as Philly and pages of these stickers in color of these non-useable objects to give the viewer the opportunity to at least think about where these things go in the city.”

Bike (PH)ix by Corrina Mehiel, photo courtesy of the artist

Corrina Mehiel continued, “Thinking about the bikes, though, I have this love of transportation and movement. I traveled a lot, it’s like a compulsion, not like crazy, somewhere between doing my work and being a tourist. And just going to places and existing there with no money, it’s weird, I’ve gone to India many, many times and just to be…I like doing that kind of travel and then being in cities in the U.S. is a little more hyper-aware of objects.”

“I’m interested in this conversation but I’m also thinking about the idea of responsibility in the context of a utopian society and who’s to say what responsibilities we should be taking on. How much should we want to clean up our space? I don’t know if it matters. But, these ideas point out the need to change the feeling of a neighborhood and that it leads to people taking care of their homes and they all layer on top of each other.”

Corrina Mehiel‘s story and adventures in guerilla art-bike repairs is on her blog “a year of making things“.

Written and photographed by DoN except where noted. Thank you to Bonnie Schorske for sharing her photographs and Joe Girandola, Director of MFA Program in Studio Art at University of the Arts for his enthusiastic introduction to Corrina Mehiel.

Most of the bikes are gone already but this is where they were if you think you saw one:

Broad and Lombard (SW corner)

Pine between 15^th and Broad (North side)

Pine between 9^th and 8^th (South side)

Walnut and 18^th Street

Spruce and 13^th Street

Lombard and 16^th Street

15^th between Pine and Lombard (West side)

12^th and Vine (West side)

11^th and Appletree

11^th and Cherry

Moore College of Art and Design Senior Exhibit 2012

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

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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 & 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 & 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.”

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

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