Philadelphia Art Studios | DoNArTNeWs

Laura D. Adams, 915 Spring Garden Art Studios, Artists’ House Gallery

915 Spring Garden Art Studios held their Spring open studio tour April 29th, Spike the biker, Jeff the photographer and DoN converged on the fifth floor of the art studio building with the idea of visiting each floor’s artists. The old industrial building, by the decaying aqua duct on Spring Garden Street, is divided into studio spaces and has hosted Philadelphia artists for thirty years. For a time the studios were open only once a year, in the Fall now coinciding with Philadelphia Open Studio Tours city wide art crawl, but many artists in the building opened up for a Springtime tour offering a chance to meet the artists in their work spaces. The first studio our trio visited was Laura D. Adams, a self described realist painter, displaying a group of paintings she had readied for an upcoming show at Artists’ House Gallery in Old City arrayed along the sunny wall of her space, offering us a great preview for her art show opening June 1st.

Laura D. Adams, 915 Spring Garden Art Studios

DoN asked Laura D. Adams what she was doing to prepare for the show at Artists’ House Gallery? “I first agreed to do the show back in May, so I started preparing the work for it, really, in July. I started doing the prep work, planning what work would be in it. I’ve just been working steadily all year towards it, there will be some older works from last year but there will be ten or twelve new paintings. Which is a lot for me to do in a year, I work really slowly.”

DoN questioned Laura about her realist style and if she had a theory of what’s real or not? “Less now than before, I used to be interested in a kind of almost pushing that boundary. Like that painting of the door that’s on the floor. I’m not doing as much trompe l’oeil as I used to, that’s from about three years ago and last year I did some 3D sculptural paintings, they were rolls of tape where I cut them out in the shape of a roll of tape and then I painted the whole thing, all the text, price tags, to look exactly like a roll of tape. I did four of them and then hung them on the wall. The same kind of thing, trying to play with our perception of reality.”

Laura D. Adams, 915 Spring Garden Art Studios

Is there a distinction between realism and trompe l’oeil? Laura D. Adams said, “I kind of veered off, it’s still trompe l’oeil, in the sense that it’s really solid space, I’m still interested in really compressing the picture plane. But I got really interested in patterns, so that’s kind of been a thing this year. Fabric and textiles, I love detail, so that’s a way to explore a lot of detail.”

Laura D. Adams, 915 Spring Garden Art Studios, Artists’ House Gallery opening reception 6/1/2012.

Read about 915 Spring Garden Art Studios artist, Eric Hall on DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer

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Bruce Kravetz, Photographer, The Mills Artist Studios, Manayunk

Bruce Kravetz and DoN walked along the tow path in Manayunk along the canal, part of the bike trail that leads from Locust Street to Valley Forge, after having coffee at La Colombe on Main Street. Bruce’s photography studio is in The Mill Studios at 123 Leverington Street, an artist’s studio space since the late 1990’s, and the discussion was around his pending presentation of a new work at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Fishtown. Geese swam in the low greenish water of the canal, the roar of cars up on the expressway echoed across the valley. “It’s a place you can show your work and talk about it, it’s the first time I’m showing that eighty-five year old nude.”

Bruce Kravetz, Photographer, The Mills Artist Studios, Manayunk

“So, it should be kind of interesting. It’s the first time I’m showing it in public, I’ve shown my wife and my friends and I got their feedback but I’ve never shown it to a group of people. So, this is going to be kind of interesting, I don’t know how they’ll react. The size of the print is actually 44″ by 135”, shot with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera with EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens, I printed it myself on my Epson Stylus® Pro 9880.” DoN spoke up like one of the squawking geese, “That’s a lot of paper! And ink! Is this a one shot deal, it must be expensive?”

Bruce Kravetz, Photographer, The Mills Artist Studios, Manayunk

“Well, no, I think the ink figures in at fifty cents a square foot and the paper is about a dollar a foot, it’s not that expensive. If you don’t count the price of the printer. If I can’t be good to myself, be big.” DoN asked about the subject of his project, aging nude female models, posed classically, “I always find for some reason young models are a dime a dozen, and they’re over done..I always find that older people have something to say, they’re not vacuous.”

Bruce Kravetz, Philadelphia Homeless #2, archival pigment print, (photograph courtesy of the artist), the photograph is included in the Photo Review 2011 Competition website.

How long have you been working on this project? “Well, I’d say about three months now. I get some interesting comments when I approach people, I have to be very careful when I approach women, reassuring them that they can have somebody accompany them. I’m having trouble getting models, I like people who look their age. I’m not looking for body-builders, I’m just looking for normal, everyday kind of people, normal wrinkles and normal things that happen to the body as it ages, I find it interesting and exciting. You can intellectualize it up the wazoo; a blank wall or a brick wall that’s old, with moss on it and stuff like that. I feel about it that same ways, it’s a body that has lived.” As Bruce Kravetz and DoN started the steep climb up Leverington Street back to the Mills he said, “And they say things to you with wrinkles and crevices, sagging parts that are certainly more interesting than a Photoshopped young twenty year old.”