Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry by Philadelphia poets

Waxing Poetic

Waxing Poetic, Laura Pritchard

Waxing Poetic

Friday, March 13, 2015 at 7:30pm in Widener Hall at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
Sunday, March 15, 2015 at 3pm at The Academy of Vocal Arts.

Lyric Fest unveils an exciting new commission from LF’s first ever composer in residence, Kile Smith. This cross-fertilization of visual, poetic and musical arts features works of four Philadelphia poets inspired by Laura Pritchard’s imaginative paintings of fine-art batik. Join us for a unique and lively art happening ~ art viewing, poetry reading and musical premiere all wrapped in one. With baritone, David Teadt and mezzo soprano, Suzanne DuPlantis and Laura Ward, piano.You are invited to an extraordinary collaboration of paintings, poetry, and song. – Lyric Fest

Waxing Poetic, Laura Pritchard Waxing Poetic, Laura Pritchard, batik

“Waxing Poetic, presented by Lyric Fest features my paintings and the premier of the song cycle In This Blue Room by composer Kile Smith. The lyrics are the poems written in response to my paintings by poets Julia Blumenreich, Susan Fleshman, Siobhan Lyons, and Donna Wolf-Palacio.

Susan DuPlantis, mezzo soprano, Daniel Teadt, baritone, Laura Ward, piano, and Kaylee Goodwin and Jake Miller, readers, perform. Come join us for a glass or two of wine and experience this multi-dimensional event.” – Laura Pritchard

Waxing Poetic

Friday, March 13, 2015 at 7:30pm in Widener Hall at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and Sunday, March 15, 2015 at 3pm at The Academy of Vocal Arts.

Venue and Parking Information:
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
8855 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118, http://www.chestnuthillpres.org/about/contact/location/ (On-site and street parking available)
Academy of Vocal Arts, Helen Corning Warden Theater
1920 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, http://avaopera.org/venue/warden.php near Rittenhouse Square. (Garage parking at 226 W. Rittenhouse Square or 1945 Walnut Street)

The Fantastic World of Laura Pritchard, video by John Thornton

“Some who have inquired about the event, Waxing Poetic, (information in previous post). My paintings are part of this multidimensional experience that involves performance of poetry and song. The paintings are not being exhibited separately. However, my other work is often available for viewing (for free!) at galleries throughout the Philadelphia area. I would be happy to add you to my mailing list so that you receive information about future shows. I have lots of thoughts re. the relationship of time and art which I will not expound about here but this exhibition/performance is going to be worth every nickel. . . .” – Laura Pritchard

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Thread of Thought, Leslie Atik Artist’s Talk at CFEVA

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Leslie Atik, Notes on a Rose, hand painted marking tags, map pins, chalk and paint

“It’s exciting to be here, I want to thank Amie Potsic for her curatorial vision and bringing Tara O’Brien and me together for this exciting project.” said Leslie Atik at the opening of Thread of Thought at Center for Emerging Visual Artists. “I want to tell you a little about my work, it really grows out of my love of language, that’s the first place it starts. I love language and grammar, I’m one of those people who like to diagram sentences and I like conjugating verbs and all that sort of stuff. It took me a long tome, believe me, to get here but I finally got to the point where I wanted to make that the stuff of my artwork. So, that’s the beginning place and the thing that I really love is thread and anything to do with thread. Textile people out there understand that, if you like to knit or crochet or weave, I started realizing and not in a linear way but there are a lot of things that overlap when you talk about language and you talk about textiles. There are a lot of metaphors of textiles that are used in describing language but at a basic level when you talk about language you talk about surface and a structure that generates that surface. And that’s something that language shares with textile, so, when I’m talking about structure I mean the grammar, how the sentence is put together, not neccessarily what it means. That obviously is a layer of it, the underneath part is what interests me in textiles, too. So, those units make up the surface – I could talk forever about that stuff.”

Leslie Atik, Notes on a Rose, hand painted marking tags, map pins, chalk and paint

“Fast forward, the other thing that may be of biographical interest is I taught Spanish for many years and so I was at the blackboard back in the day when you actually stood at the blackboard with a piece of chalk. And I realized that something else I wanted to bring into my art making was, I thought, ‘Well, Jeez, this is mark-making’, and I worked at bringing my chalkboard into my work. It’s a linear fashion I’m describing but this is what happened.”

Notes on a Rose, Leslie Atik at Center for Emerging Visual Artists

This piece is called Notes on a Rose, it’s a series of pieces that are similar to this and what I’m doing is marking the language. But each one is different, I’ve marked different things, I’ve structured them differently. And I thank Amie because any time I can work directly on the wall it really excites me. I like the idea that at the end of this exhibition this piece is going to be erased. It has that temporal element to it…it’s built on two texts, the middle text is from Romeo and Juliet and it’s the famous scene where Juliet is asking, ‘Why is your name Romeo?‘ That which we call a rose by any other name would smell so sweet. The middle passage is about names, therefore in the grammar I immediately thought of nouns – names and nouns. So I marked – all these patterns are marking places in the grammar where there were nouns – the little tags that I buy at Staples are called marking tags. So I’m literally marking the language and I’m mapping them because I’m using little map pins on the placement as well. Each of these little tags has been hand painted in watercolor.”

“The text on either side is a little excerpt from Gertrude Stein‘s writing, A Rose is a Rose. So I just repeated it over and over and to me that seemed like a textile to repeat that unit, A Rose is a Rose, and on this side I marked the vowels that repeat and on that side is the consonants. There’s another piece around the side there that’s based on a play and the one over there is based on Spanish, those who speak Spanish know there are two types of being to express the verbs ‘to be’ in Spanish, one referring to the state of things which is the outside and the other one is more essential kind of being. That’s basically the idea that helped me structure that piece.”

Leslie Atik at Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Dream Notes, hand painted marking tags, map pins, chalk and paint

“When I talk about different layers of language sometime I don’t just use the black and white because this rose idea was so strong I said, ‘OK, let’s just have fun with the color rose.’ I just used the idea of the rose and made that the color palette. The tags I just paint by the hundreds. The surface on the wall is just house paint, interior latex paint, right on the wall. If you come around to the side this is one of my favorite views of the piece, I really am playing with the idea of the text in the textile, so the idea here is that a text is generating textiles. The erasing is purposeful, it’s kind of developed through my work, to create this piece I do a lot of work at home first getting my handwriting to do what I want it to do in the space I want to work in. But I like erasing for formal reasons, I like the graying that it adds to my palette but also because I like the idea that this thing is ephemeral and that you’re writing and re-writing and the idea of repeating which is part of the textile process and part of the language process as well. It is fragile, but I’ve lived with some of these and as long as they’re not mishandled they hold up pretty well but they’re not meant to last for a long time.”

Fiber Philadelphia 2012

Thread of Thought at Center for Emerging Visual Artists through March 23rd.

Read more about FiberPhiladelphia2012 at Side Arts with Cassandra Hoo‘s excellent article.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer, DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

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Apocalypse Soon: 2012 @ Da Vinci Art Alliance

Bob (R.B.) Strauss

Cultural Collisions, Turtulia, BARE

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DoNArTNeWs

Ola! The Philadelphia Sketch Club is hosting Cultural Collisions: Latino Artists in Philadelphiawith an art exhibition of paintings, drawings and photography, the Turtulia included poetry, music, perforformance and dance and the upcoming extravaganza, Gala Milonga, with Tango lessons, dance performance and live entertainment. Shoshka and DoN attended the opening reception for the art exhibit last Sunday and literally participated in an historic event. Charles Cushing is the curator of the exhibit incorporating Latin American art, poetry, music, performance and more; he has been practicing Tango for weeks preparing to take the floor of the Sketch Club (perfect for dancing by the way) . The art show originated with Cushing curating a smaller exhibit of Latin artists at Two Penn Center and through a series of acquaintances and meetings he was able to coordinate with the Sketch Club’s exhibition committee a show in the historic gallery during Latin American History Month.

Produced mostly by Philadelphia Latin artists, the show includes traditional Latin art but also contemporary, abstract, photo-realist, expressionist paintings and fine art photography.For example, a group of four 8×10 silver gelatin print photographs in the far corner of the gallery by Jorge Figueroa represent more than just the emerging artist’s first art show, the images document a way of life since the artist began taking photographs as a teenager and is now 65. Monica Rodrigo, President of the Board of Raices Culturales Latino Americans, explained to DoN how Figueroa’s family oftened questioned his perchant for taking pictures but now there’s talk of an exhibit at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, a catalog raisonne and more. Here’s this guy in Guatamala clicking pictures, taking flack from his kids, working hard yet documenting American life, capturing history through glimpses into true humanity. The artist was present forTurlulia, the poetry reading last Friday evening – more about that later on.

Artist/Curator Charles Cushing at the opening of Cultural Collisions @ The Philadelphia Sketch Club.

Silver gelatin prints by Jorge Figueroa @ PSC Cultural Collisions. The lower image is called, “The Junkyard Worker“, absolutely stunning – the clarity, narrative, execution, presentation are all first rate; Figueroa’s work is a treasure trove of fine art photography.

Silver gelatin print by Jorge Figueroa. Monica explained to DoN that this image represents this young girls world, her job as a maid means she is responsible for the space you see in the picture – a corner of the world.

Dante Sanchez‘, “The Time Has Come“, portraying “the moment Judas felt sorry and hung himself”. Sanchez’ bold strokes, inspired by the writing of Juan Bosch‘s “Judas Escariate El Calumniado“, have a plein air quality, as if quickly painted in the moment; Dante captures the instant when the sky darkens as Judas dies.

Dante Sanchez with his, “Dancing on 5th Street.” During Friday nights, Turtulia, the climax of the evening was a performance of La Bomba in authentic costume with live music! DoN captured the event on tape and will post video clips soon on DoNArTNeWs. Dante was the MC and kept the evening on course with poetry, music, song and dancing long into the evening until everyone spilled out onto Camac street to be greeted by warm summer rain. The Sketch Club should install a DJ booth – what a terrific room for dancing – everyone was moving to the infectious beat, inspired by the creativity, color and culture.

Dante Sanchez‘, “Mental Vacation in Santo Domingo“. Dante told DoN, “Dominicans are always dreaming of their country, sending money home to their families but always dreaming of the beach.”

Sylvia Castellanos with, “First Communion“, oil on canvas. The subject of the work, the artist’s niece now all but grown up into a beautiful young woman, was present at the show; the sense of family, love and pride was overflowing and passionate.

Diana Ovieda‘s, “Cherry“, a large painting evocative of the spirit of the historic event at The Philadelphia Sketch Club. Diana was not present but her mother sure was! Dr. Nimi Ovieda was not pleased when her daughter veered towards a career in art while away on a high school class trip. Now Dr. Ovieda recognizes the passion and drive Diana possessed in order to attend PAFA and now U Penn. “Cherry” could be a painting from any modern culture, anywhere in the world; the scale, color sense and composition are cosmopolitan, vibrant and timeless.

“Surprise“, graphite on paper by artist Juan Gomez. A super-strong piece; DoN overheard Steve Iwanczuk advising Gomez to enter the piece in an upcoming exhibition. There are prospectus’ available online at the Sketch Club’s website.

Jose Sebourne with his watercolor, “Staci Jiggitts“. Sebourne’s technique is so precise, so refined that at first glance the image appears to be a photograph then magically melts into a nuanced painting, the folds of the jacket abstract, the light glinting on an earring really a scrape of paint, the subject a young woman lost deep in thought – a great painting.

Cultural Collision‘s Art Stars: Diana Larisgoitia, Pedro Fuller, Jose Sebourne, Dora Becerra, Carlos Pascual, LuzSelenia Salas, Albert Becerra, Sylvia Castellanos and Juan Gomez.

Friday, 9/5, the Turtulia at the Sketch Club with poety and performances by Mirelle Palmansa, Alfierus Bonilla, Gladis Montolio, Dante Sanchez, Irsa Garcia, Isida M. Brache, Iris Violete Colon-Torres, Adolfo Suarez and Carmen Torres with singer Juan Bonilla, guitarist Jose Bonilla and the Impacto Vallenato group performing between readings was theatrically spectacular. DoN does not speak Spanish – at all – but the crowd made Shoshka, DoN and new friend Charleen feel welcome, the poetry was passionate and emotional, the songs sweet and soulful, the readings by accomplished academics, writers and performers transformative. America is not just the USA; America extends from Canada to Chile with artists, writers, musicians and performers inhabiting each state, country, island, city, town, farm…world’s collide at Cultural Collisions.

The exhibition continues through September 24th, this Friday, September 19th, is Gala Malanga with Tango lessons, performances and an evening of dancing. DoN apologizes to all his new latin friends for miss-spelling “Turtulia” in the last newsletter.BARE

Downstairs in the pool room @ PSC is a photo exhibition entitled BARE natural light nude, photographs by Stephen M. Kane. Like, WOW!!! Kane’s images are in a word – sexy. The show brings to mind Thomas Eakin’s challenge to present the nude in a beautiful, natural manner; Kane surely is pushing the same envelop to present the human form in an intimate, artistic form; each sample of his work activates the space with energy.

Coming Soon

Next DoNArTNeWs will review Ted Warchal at the Hopkins House in Camden, NJ, Rikard Larma at Smile, Second Thursday at Crane and more.

LoVe

DoN

All photographs by DoNBrewerMultimedia.

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