Category Archives: Plastic Art

Art made from plastic.

The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers @ Outsider Folk Arts in the Goggle Works.

The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers have overtaken Outsiders Folk Arts in the Goggleworks Center for the Arts, a major cultural hub of the Reading region. DoN saw families tumbling out the door after some sort of recital, there’s an art show of students who have taken classes in the center, there’s an enourmous wood shop that smells so good. The Goggleworks is a magnet for artists of all stripes finding access to a wide array of opportunities and is really cool space itself, packed with studios, galleries, show spaces and art. The Dumpster Divers are definitely grooving on the vibe of the place and have installed unique, quirky objects which will inspire many budding artists as well as attracting collectors, since Viener’s artistic eye is well respected.

George Viener is a collector of folk art, outsider art and self-taught art; even though the many of the Divers are professional artists in their own right, collectively the group has a simple basic principle of being creative with what’s on hand, art doesn’t have to be expensive to make and rescueing lost objects ala Marcel DuChamp is de riguer. DoN thinks that counts as self-taught, it’s new, unfiltered raw ideas bubbling to the surface; Dada.

Len Davidson, Queen of the Gnomes, @ Outsider Folk Arts in Reading, PA.

Randal Cleaver, Space Time @ Outsider Folk Arts.

Warren Muller, Philadelphia light artist @ Outsider Folk Arts in the Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading.

Burnell Yow! – Dolls of the Apocalypse @ Outsider Folk Art

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In Philip Dick’s dystopian future sci-fi classic, Dr. Bloodmoney, Happy Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers trundles around in a wagon pulled by a donkey and gleans from the post-nuclear highway with his robotic prothetic “arms”. Yow! takes DoN to that future place when transmogrified beings wander Earth looking for charms, spells and spare mother-boards. Tapping into the zeitgeist that trash is future treasure, these dolls represent the Apocalypse that has already happened all around DoN is slo-mo without him really noticing. Dolls of the Apolalypse incorporate actual Barbie Doll body parts – using a terrific technique, Yow! tricks the eye into believing the work is cast metal. Plastic is the new Apocalypse.

Burnell Yow!, Dolls of the Apocalypse in The Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Show @ Outsider Folk Arts in Reading, PA.

Dumpster Divers 17yo

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The Dumpster Diver Gallery @ 734 South Street held a gala in honor of their 17th anniversary as an anarchist art collective dedicated to making art from cultural refuse. Like the gleaners in a Millet painting, this disparate group sifts through the remnants of contemporary culture creating junque, elegant objects, witty pronouncements, versatile visions as if gathering potatoes in a French field. Ellen Benson‘s mixed media constructions from old books and Lincoln Logs throb with vague dreams of lives past; each anthropomorphic object has a funky little personality all it’s own, Benson is on a mission to create 1000 dolls, she’s approaching 500.

Randy Dalton has recreated the Blue Grotto in the back of the sprawling space; DoN LoVeS seeing funky old computers like the Mac blue-and-white monitor being used as an art object like some retrofitted Neuromancer future style. DoN‘s blue-n-white glowed purple and made a zapping sound early in the morning a while back but it’s still in the basement, too beautiful to throw away. Neil Benson‘s lamp made of stacked tin boxes is a museum piece; each box filled with memetic waves forms depending on the pattern printed on the thin folded metal. The Dumpster Divers on South Street is like William Gibson‘s future city built on the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge after the grid goes down and a whole society develops meeting every need from noodle soup to watch repair.

Artists are taking the city over from City Hall to South Street, Kensington to University City, Rittenhouse Square to Pretzel Park; art is more than just on the surface, it’s being built in.

Ellen Benson with her dolls @ Dumpster Divers on South Street.

Randy Dalton’s Blue Grotto @ Dumpster Divers.

To Be or Not To Be @ Rutgers Fine Art, Camden, NJ

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The future of painting and image-making was the core of two day symposium at Rutgers University Fine Arts. With introductions to more than a dozen amazing painters, fantastically futuristic images, meme trees, 3D linticular prints and vast amounts of computer-based presentations in four information packed presentations. DoN likes to go someplace cool for his birthday like NYC but Bruce Garrity one of the coordinators reached out to DoN about the symposium; it turns out Camden is pretty damn cool. Libby Rosoff of artblog (OMFG!! – a blog legend) was the moderator for Friday’s panel, “Painting, So What?“, Libby & DoN had only met through Facebook and now we actually know each other in real life. Rosoff lead a strong discussion of the relevance of painting and what constitutes painting in the world today and really kept the discussion and presentations on target. Each artist did a video presentation and talk about their art and then Libby moderated questions from the audience with the panel offering thoughtful opinions on what constitute art today.

The symposium was organized by Margery Amdur and Bruce Garrity who authoritatively and wisely organized panel discussions about art and the relevance of image-making in the post-modern age. The art on view in The Stedman Gallery is post-post modern contemporary with a futurist beam of thought-bubbles enveloping the diverse media on view in the galleries. The future is here and it’s about “experience design”, from Camden to Outer Space and back, the dual show at Stedman Gallery and Hopkins House is a retrofitted future fantasy.

Amy S. Kauffman – a UArts Alum, Holla Back, Girl! – makes her mark by folding tootsie roll, gum and candy wrappers in endless numbers of little paper boats or paper chains such as this enormous coil @ Hopkins House Gallery.

Pam Longobardi mixes objects that have drifted loose from the giant plastic pollution blob floating in the middle of the oceans with images of plastic bits that have been deformed and reshaped by the ocean and cast up on the beach – check out driftwebs.com . Pam’s story of how she discovered these objects is totally engrossing, as are her paintings such as “Surge” a painting full of the tension of tidal waves and fragile power grids.

DoN collected so much information to share about the other panelists including Carol Prusa‘s entrancing dome drawings with fiber optic lights, Liz Brown‘s dioramas of mismatched dumb stuff and Steve Pauley‘s gravestone-like carvings of vending machines, anthrax letters and homeland security advisory guides…deep.

CFEVA presents Treasures @ Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP

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The Center for Emerging Visual Artists has installed a show called Treasures at the Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Building @ 1701 Market Street featuring works by Career Development Programs Fellows. The spacious lobby is displaying works by some of DoN’s favorite CFEVA artists including Scott Pelnat, John Woodin, Ben Volta, Danielle Bursk, Brenna K. Murphy and many more – the works are of a smaller scale and affordably priced. The art party was well attended and some of the works sold while the wine flowed and patrons nibbled the tasty buffet. DoN spoke with Amy Potsic about how CFEVA installs “Custom Exhibitions” in public spaces where the art and artists can be exposed to the world at large instead of the confines of a gallery. For more than three years this important organization has placed works in offices, lobbies and corporate spaces where potential collectors can view art in their own environment, often resulting in sales for the artists.