Category Archives: Philadelphia Artists

Philadelphia’s art scene is vibrant, ever-changing, combining technique and technology for new visions of reality, creating a transformative influence on life-style in the urban community and beyond.

Upcycling Trash to Treasure

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Philadelphia Dumpster Divers at Famous 4th Street Deli for their 25th Anniversary, January 10th, 2012.

Exhibit: The Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia:

Main Line Unitarian Church, Fireside Gallery, 816 S. Valley Forge Road, Devon, PA

January 5 – February 10, 2013

Opening reception: Saturday, January 5, 4-7 pm

Regular gallery hours are 9:00 to 4:30 Mon thru Fri and 9:00 to 2:00 on Sunday. Go to www.mluc.org for more information.

Over 20 Dumpster Divers from this imaginative group of found object artists are exhibiting in this delightful and inspiring exhibit in the Fireside Gallery at Main Line Unitarian Church. The Dumpster Divers exhibit their upcycling art as a group and individually, all with unique visions for their work. They meet monthly to share trash-picked finds, art-making stories, flea market news, and socialize with their fellow art eccentrics. The environmental impact of reused materials is Ecologically Correct, but it is through their diverse visions that the Dumpster Divers make a large impact. Transformation of societys trash to create meaning and beauty is achieved through the eyes of these artists. Their artwork is as diverse as the group and materials used, all of it engaging, often playful, sometimes political, ironic, and definitely captivating! Please join us for the

OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, January 5, 2013, 4-7 pm, including artist talks.

Photograph by DoN Brewer.

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Art Ability 2012 at Bryn Mawr Rehab

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Nosocomephobia, Maria Crean, Art Ability 2012 at Bryn Mawr Rehab

Art Ability 2012, An International Juried Exhibition and Sale of Art and Fine Crafts by Artists with Physical, Cognitive, Hearing and Visual Disabilities at Bryn Mawr Rehab Center in Malvern, PA is in a word – massive! Thousands of entries are juried to a manageable 600 or so artworks displayed throughout the modern medical facility outside of Philadelphia. Maria Crean is a textile artist from Belfast, Northern Ireland and her cross stitch sampler is a wonderful metaphor for the art collection. Read DoN‘s review of just sixteen of the works from all over the USA and the world at www.DoNArTNeWs.com

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Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

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Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery, Out of the Well, woodcut on Japanese paper

Have you ever experienced that magic moment with a work of art when it changes from one thing to another? Like when an abstract becomes a landscape, or a figure emerges from a mess of paint? Expect that to happen when you visit Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery. What looks like a drawing is a woodcut, what looks 2D is 3D, what appears abstract actually has a distinct narrative. The gallery on Church Street in Old City presents the artist’s work sparely, each piece or grouping has plenty of elbow room yet the space is entirely activated by the artist’s conceptual prints. Out of the Well reads like an abstract drawing from across the room but when approached the distinct markings of gouged wood become apparent and the sense of looking down a deep well and not tree rings comes into view. Rebecca Gilbert‘s art always takes the viewer on a journey to a strange place with an odd sense of the familiar. Have you ever looked down a well? Or even seen a real well?

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

The triptych above looks at first like a crumbled pediment then transmogrifies into a skateboard ramp over a dirt pile. The static work becomes action packed with the handiwork of kids setting up a dare-devil jump for bikes; the seemingly flat surface is actually layers of dimpled board built up thickly and hanging away from the wall. Again the sweet moment of change, a dual reality of simple forms switch from abstract to story-telling illustration. Remember these are prints, not drawings or paintings, and more sculptural than flat.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

Artist Dan Chow, like many others, moved up so close to the installation that a museum guard would drag you back. Thoughtfully, he covered his mouth so as not to breath onto the delicate surface to inspect the incredible detail and peek behind the sides to discover how the work floats away from the wall. Rebecca Gilbert told DoN she wanted to make a big Evil Knievle sized jump but settled for the fun sized kid version. But again, it’s the story of riding a bike really fast and making the jump over a dirt pile like an imaginary row of trucks on a Harley Fat Boy that creates action in the art.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

The trio of woodcuts in white frames is peaceful like sitting by a pond, the watery blue ripples out like the waves from a thrown pebble. Insect and plant forms linger near the edges. You can almost hear the breeze rustling leaves and croaking frogs. Again, the images aren’t flat, layers of prints are built up in an elegant merging of amorphous shapes to delight the eye and bring wonderment to the mind.

Rebecca Gilbert is a CFEVA Fellow, her communications skills are awesome. She speaks with clarity and has stories to tell about each piece with explanations for the symbolism she incorporates in her art. And when you know the stories then the mark-making, line and color take on a richer quality saturated with colorful myths, amusing anecdotes and flights of fancy. Printmaking is a challenging art form requiring multiple skills such as drawing, sculpting and mechanical mastery, the show of prints, Shine: Rebecca Gilbert, will expand your mind and improve your knowledge of what a print can be in the age of mechanical reproduction.

Shine: Rebecca Gilbert at 110 Church Gallery

DoN had the pleasure of interviewing Rebecca Gilbert in her new studio on the second floor of Da Vinci Art Alliance in South Philly during Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2012 and will post more information about her process and the many projects she is juggling while hammering, gouging and slicing away at a plank of wood, creating the reverse image of what you see in the final print. Amazing.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

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Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

October 13th, 2012 artist Hiro Sakaguchi presented an artist talk to a crowd of art enthusiasts at Seraphin Gallery on Pine Street. DoN exerpted and transposed some of the lecture as best as he could.

“This photo was 2011, I think it’s after everything happened in Japan, the tsunami and everything. I had the chance to go to New Hampshire and had the chance to view this mountain. But for me I wasn’t thinking about the mountain, looking at the horizon line, like everybody else, when you have this kind of landscape in front of you. For me, I thought about the tsunami, the tragedy you know and I started thinking about it. So this is the feeling I got on the top of the mountain when I was thinking about my native country, I know what people are thinking about, it’s very meditative that way. This was the first thing I was thinking about and it starts from here. It’s how it started in my head, every artwork. ”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“Let’s start with drawing here. This drawing is called Flower Happening and as you see, there’s an image of an airplane. I think because of the apocalypse thinking in my head, documentary movies about war, natural disasters type of movies, so, one movie showed airplanes carpet bombing in Germany, Japan, everywhere. So it’s kind of like I had this it occurred to me that this violent act, I wanted to make it to something positive. Somebody told me the other day, like 60s people put flowers into the barrel of guns, you know Make Peace Not War, so putting instead of bomb, I put flowers to make it peaceful. You can see underneath is actually the town where I came from. Chiba City, Japan. This is a drawing and then a painting. The drawing was different, conversation wise, was fast but the painting was next.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

Table top battle field with toy soldiers whose guns are replaced with flowers, tanks made from thread spools and hills made from Art Forum magazines on a soccer field of fake grass. “I was thinking about this one when I was making it, first of all, as a kid I didn’t have the technique to do this, but if I was ten years old and I did this I would be so happy. But, it came back to me know that I can make a child’s toy on this battle field. And also a toy I kind of think represents society, how our society functions, how we always build a toy, you know? Kids love their toys. It’s a questioning of functional toys and our society. And also a question of human violence.”

“I just got a FaceBook advertisement for a video game saying, “Peace is Not An Option!”. It’s really a violent way we have these games, war as a game. It’s kind of interesting because we don’t have to do it in real life. I always kind of question those things. So this has three things going on here: the field is a soccer field, a game field and also a battle field. And like I said about the question of human violence, soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world but supposedly started from an eighth century England people started kicking someone’s skull. So, it’s a violent game. And yet as a child we crave something like that. Of course, this is artwork, so you’re questioning the function of art. See how thick this Art Forum is?”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“I enjoy doing splashing, throwing paint, my technique is actually air rifle used to splash the paint. This one is similar, a picture of a battle ship, the idea is a 21st Century Noah’s Ark. So, it’s a lot of bad things have happened in the world, somehow I saw this World War II Japanese battle ship, so similar (to the drawing) I wanted to make something peaceful. So I take all the weapons out and change and added trees, a green roof, and also solar and wind power, and then far away you can see the big tsunami coming in. It’s like like combining a History Channel program with recent events. I think if you go to Japan or Europe, you’ll see these mangled concrete, to stop the force of the waves.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“These sculptures, I don’t know if you know this, this whole show is about Love and Peace. This is a toy from when I was a kid, this is a simple toy made from a spool, chop stick and candle. And when you wind it up it moves. And because of the cuts, it can climb over the landscape.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“This big painting first I started from that rapid drawing. I imagined one theory of how wars end, a kind of imagined myself, start from that one (the drawing) then expand to that one (the battle ship) to this one. It’s kind of three different stages of my thinking. You have to start from somewhere. For this painting I was thinking of a color field painting with the splash, kind of more of an abstraction. The painting started from a floor splash, paint and let dry, paint and let dry, then I out the drawing. So it is horizontal and vertical where it came together, a combination of drawing and painting.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

“There is an animation by Takaji Matsudo, he made an animation about a space ship based on WWII battle ship and then in the future aliens attacking it, so people on earth decommissioned this battle ship and made it into a space ship…I never grew up drawing comics but for me I enjoyed history stories, but I thought now it’s kind of funny for me to make a comic image here, right now.”

Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery

This last drawing combines the photograph of Hiro Sakaguchi on the mountain top staring at the moon surrounded by swirls made from another child’s toy, the Spirograph. Today is the last day for this inspiring show at Seraphin Gallery, so while you’re out visiting POST shows take some time to visit and remember your childhood.

Make Love, Not War 2012.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

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Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Catharine Mulligan, Untitled, acrylic with chalk and gouache on paper

A Drawing Show of Artists in Philadelphia Selected by Alex Kanevsky and Bill Scott at The Philadelphia Sketch Club is an inspiring collection of drawings which stretches the imagination and boundaries of what one thinks of as drawings. From traditional pencil and charcoal drawings to abstract mixed media like gouache, acrylic and house paint, the show is a carefully curated exhibit displaying the state of the art of drawing as considered by two of Philadelphia’s finest artists. Instead of a salon style exhibit with art packed from floor to ceiling, the show gives each piece of artwork room to breath and the viewer the opportunity to examine the work without others elbowing for attention. The historic gallery/studio looks like a room in a museum.

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Mary Page-Evans, Merci de K, charcoal, pastel and gouache on paper

DoNArTNeWs asked Alex Kanevsky about the process of assembling the collection for this extraordinary exhibition of diverse drawings. DoN said, “I know you know a lot of people.” Alex replied, “Well, Bill knows a lot more people than I do. The process was simple. We went to a coffee house, we sat down and tried to write a list of all the people who we know and liked. We figured since this is an educational show and did it because we wanted to see these people’s work in one place. We just invited everybody whose drawings spoke to us.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Richard Taransky, Bella Figura, charcoal and white pastel

Kanevsky continued, “And after that list, which initially was fairly limited, it kept on growing because every couple days after that meeting, I would call or Bill would call and say, ‘How about that person?’. And that’s pretty much how it happened.” DoN asked, “Did you do studio visits?” Alex said, “We did some studio visits. You know, this started with a presentation here about a year ago at The Sketch Club and we saw that it would be fun to do this show and we approached the president with the idea. But when it actually came down to organizing things I was away. I was away the whole summer, so I didn’t get to do many studio visits. I knew what people did and whoever I didn’t know Bill sent me the images over the internet. We did make some choices from the images because we knew what the work looked like in general.”

“These are people whose work we know and like. So it didn’t come out of the blue.” DoN asked about how Alex felt about the end result, he said, “I was so impressed. We were worried that it might look spotty or not very cohesive but once we hung it we were both really impressed with the level of the drawings. Some of the drawings here I just absolutely love them. There were some really good surprises, for example, Michael Rossman’s drawings, but I never met him. And I wanted to have those drawings herein the show because I had admired them for about ten years. Then there’s other drawings I like but I didn’t know what they would give us but never the less they are beautiful.”

We talked bout the influence of the internet and how images are flattened out because of screen resolution but Alex Kanevsky expressed his pleasure at the works when they arrived. He said, “There are some good surprises this way. Some of the work I didn’t know at all because they were one’s that Bill liked, but we kept each other in the loop. If I suggested something then I would send him images. It was a really interesting process. Every single drawing is something we are happy to have here.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Bill Scott, Copy of the Cherry Tree, drypoint on paper

DoNArTNeWs talked with co-curator Bill Scott about the collaboration, “I think Alex approached me once up here about doing a show. And then we mentioned it to Bill Patterson and he said, ‘Sure.’ Then we met because he was about to do the Woodmere show, long before, but the one conscious decision was not to overlap, to give a chance to the people that were not in the juried show. We tried to, well it might be a bit of a rub, but we tried to not just have the same show again.”

DoN asked how Bill Scott decided? Was it the most memorable images? “We both picked people and asked them to send us pictures. About half of them got back to us but in the end each one of us picked ones we liked.” DoN asked, “So you each got to pick some? Was there cooperation?” Bill said, “Yeah, we did it all through e-mail when he was away. It was a lot of work.” How did selecting images from the internet work out? “I really like juried shows but for this each of us, if not both of us knew the artists work. So, I knew what I was looking at. I knew what they were and a lot of them I saw in person. I did a few studio visits, Amanda Bush, Mary Page-Evans. Alex knew Richard Taransky. Doris Staffel, I like her. And John Nazarewycz, I love his work, I knew them. Eileen Goodman, I knew already. So, you know, there’s no point to it, it’s just pictures. We wanted to hang a spacious show so that everything would look important.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Skimantas Pipas, Progress, mixed media on paper

Bill Scott said, “I’ve seen a lot of shows that are so over hung that you might get a migraine headache so that you don’t want to be there. You have to soothe everybody’s ego because they’re in the show, I want people to feel good for having come to see it. To feel inspired for having been here. I’d rather have a show where I feel like I’ve actually been somewhere rather than, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I’d rather leave wanting to see more.”

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Eileen Goodman, Peaches on a Dress, charcoal on paper

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Laura Velez, Follow, graphite on mylar

Drawing Show at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Michael Cierve, Mirror, graphite on paper

Saturday, October 20th is The Philadelphia Sketch Club‘s annual fundraising gala called Out of the Past…Into the Future. Featuring fine wines and culinary specialties, the event celebrates America’s oldest artist run arts club with special guest reknowned photographer Zoe Strauss. Dress is creative cocktail, black tie or costume. For tickets contact 214 545 9298.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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