Category Archives: Philadelphia Photographers

Castles Made of Sand

Sanding Ovations, Treasure Island, Florida

DoN was reading the art blog on the Huffington Post and came across a story about a sand castle artist. DoN attended the Sanding Ovations Sand Castle competition on Treasure Island, Florida in November 2011 and was impressed by the high content level of the sand castles created with such lowly materials. Sand castles is a misnomer because the artist’s create sculpture out of a difficult and ephemeral material. DoNArTNeWs abandoned the story as vacation pics and not Philadelphia Art related, but it was a really good show, very competitive and extraordinarily creative. And if Huff Post can cover sand sculpture art, so can DoN.

The metaphors and memes are just all over this category of sculpture from fading beauty to art as play to time conquers all. The term sand castle just blows up with memories of childhood beach days. Sanding Ovations exposes art to the community in a fun, understandable if confounding way and creates an experience design that’s inspiring to kids and adults.

First Place Prize and Sculptors Award Winner at Sanding Ovations.

The sand castle metaphor is apropos for artists who have to pull together disparate elements creating an object like a painting to be accepted by the community as a work of art. Like herding cats, DoN chases after elusive grants, competes for wall space in art shows, makes new art, visits art shows, writes and promotes daily, constantly developing the DoN brand. The sand castle DoN is working on now includes this blog, Contributing Writer to Side Arts, a tech start up, Philly based company, offering an excellent web presence for artists and DoN is near completion of a new book about Lilliana Didovic based on her art and the reviews DoN has published on DoNArTNeWs and Side Arts.

Karen M commented she hadn’t seen DoN around much lately, he’s been building sand castles and the wind and the waves slow his progress. But, today The Philadelphia Sketch Club and The Plastic Club have openings with an abundancce of art and artists, last night DoN experienced Kile Smith’s, Vespers with Piffaro the Renaissance Music Band and The Crossing at Old Saint Joe’s Church in Old City – there’s another show today, if you can get tickets, the music, singing and orchestration is transcendental. Talk about castles made of sand, about forty singers and musicians come together and produce an hour of spectacular beauty that wafts away on the breeze like a sand castle erodes from the weather.

View a clip from the Vespers premier in 2008, DoNBrewerMultimedia on YouTube.

DoN

Photographs by DoN Brewer shot with

Kodak Digital Cameras

Keyword: Philadelphia Art

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Laurentiu Todie, The One @ Art Ability Bryn Mawr Rehab Center, Malvern, PA.

DoNArTNeWs finally appears on page one in Google for the search term “Philadelphia art blogs“, thank you very much! DoN has written more than four hundred reviews, interviews and promotions about the Philadelphia regional art scene for DoNArTNeWs. The most frequently accessed pages include the term “Philadelphia art” in the web site statistics, “art” is the number one search term. Philadelphia art is a search term that thousands of people are investigating because the Philly art scene is, as Mayor Michael Nutter stated at the West Collects press conference, “Strong!” Great art has become synonymous with Philadelphia because of the high end cultural institutions like PMA and the innovative neighborhood artist enclaves, clubs, alliances and collectives that pervade the city and the region, creating an amorphous idea of what is Philadelphia art? Is it the great art speak that PAFA teaches it’s students? Is it the gritty allure of Fishtown, Northern Liberties or Germantown and the satisfaction of getting in early on something bohemian, eclectic, outrageous or controversial? Is Philadelphia really the sixth borough of NYC?

Art is strong and vibrant in Philadelphia with wonderful resources but DoN has heard institutional leaders say the majority of public dollars get directed to the top tier while smaller groups compete for shrinking grant money and must endure its grueling paperwork. Rachel Zimmerman of InLiquid, one of the oldest artist profile websites of its kind in Philadelphia, told DoN this past Summer that artists have three jobs: making art, selling art and the job to pay for buying art materials. Artist Gregory Prestegord told DoN there are more like seven jobs to get to what he calls “a state of meditation“, the time he actually gets to spend making art, a broad circle of activities, many unrelated to art production, must happen to get to the moment of meditation when art appears out of seemingly nowhere. Art and the creative economy is enormous in Philadelphia, the competition for money is daunting, yet artists keep pushing against the obstacles and work hard to be known as a Philadelphia Artist, the second most popular search term for DoNArTNeWs‘ Philadelphia art blog.

Search Philadelphia art, who knows what you might discover?

Happy New Year!

LoVe

DoN

Read more about Art Ability at Philly.SideArts art blog and DoNArTNeWs art blog.

Jeff Stroud, Photographer @ Galleria Deptford

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Spring Bud, photograph, Jeff Stroud, Galleria Deptford, Deptford Municipal Building, 1011 Cooper St., Deptford, NJ, December 2011.

“I just started to notice how intricate the buds are on the trees as I was passing them by while I was walking, I didn’t realize. So, I was walking with the camera and as an artist, I thought these are worth taking pictures of, it’s very detailed, there’s a lot of detail that we don’t see on a normal basis.” Jeff Stroud‘s photograph, bathed in natural light from a convenient skylight is at once impressionist and representational, a sense of the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring. “This is actually shot at my home in Magnolia, there’s woods that surround the house and the energy of it, Nature’s always changing. I was using an 18 to 55mm lens and I just get very close to the shot.”

Jeff Stroud‘s photography is part of a group show in the halls of the Deptford Municipal Building in South Jersey, he is represented by eleven photographs. Jeff brought an extra photograph with him to get help from curator Pauline Jonas in editing and she decided to include them all. The annual photography show brings together work from a diverse group of regional artists that Jonas intuitively pulls together from her wide network of resources. “I met Pauline through the Salem County Arts League, I showed with them a couple years ago, which is all kinds of artists and I met Pauline through them. People that I know from the Salem County Arts League had show’s here (at Galleria Deptford) and I came to see them.”, said Jeff. “And then Pauline invited me to be in this show.”

Born With, Jeff Stroud, photograph. Jeff is a member of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia and will be a featured artist at the group show in Cafe Twelve in early 2012.

Jeff Stroud, Photographer @ Galleria Deptford

December 5 – February 1, 2012 Reception December 11
Photography by:
Nancy Fogel and Diane Abell of www.dustydogdigital.com, Rona Golfen, Derek Jecxz, Kelly Lynd, Jeff Stroud, Arlene Wilson and her husband, Tony Wilson. And Design Concepts by David Smith.

Read more about Galleria Deptford at Philly Side Arts.

Read more about Jeff Stroud at Side Arts.

Photographs by DoN Brewer shot exclusively with

West Collection of Contemporary Art Prize Smart Phone App for People’s Choice Award Now Available for Download on iTunes

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Download the West Collects Smart Phone App, available on iTunes. DoN Brewer is grateful for the opportunity to present his photography for consideration for the prestigious and unique art collection, please vote for DoN and all your Philly favorite artists. DoNArTNeWs and Philly.SideArts were first to report the announcement of a $100K award set aside for purchase of artwork by Philadelphia artists – we literally had Mayor Nutter’s speech on YouTube within hours. DoN highly recommends Philadelphia artists take the time to enter their artwork at the West Collection website, it’s free and easy and they offer great tech support.