Tag Archives: The Plastic Club

July

Pygmalion, Roberta Gross, Shapes and Colors of Summer in July, The Plastic Club

Shapes and Colors of Summer in July
ONLINE MONTHLY EXHIBITION AT PLASTIC CLUB

The Plastic Club’s building is closed, but the Club is resuming its regular schedule of monthly shows with an online exhibition devoted to the shapes and colors of Summer.

The Summer show opens Wednesday, July 1. The art can be viewed on the Plastic Club‘s website (www.plasticclub.org) then. There will also be one of the Club’s “Third Sunday” online Salons with discussion about the exhibit on Sunday, July 19, from 1 to 2 PM.

Entries can be realistic or abstract, based on reality or your imagination, or any combination of these approaches.  Any medium is accepted. Physical artwork must be submitted in the form of a photograph or video. A reasonably clear cell phone photo or video should suffice. As always, original digital imagery, photography and video are also welcome.

Due to the building closure, we have devised a simple method to submit your photograph, image or video along with your contact information. For detailed instructions, see the “Call for Submissions” on the Exhibitions Tab of the Club’s website, www.plasticclub.org.

A lottery will select three entrants to win a prize: four free workshop sessions when the Club re-opens.

The Plastic Club, located on historic Camac Street, was founded in 1897 by a group of women artists to promote the arts to the public and support artists both in the Philadelphia community and beyond.

The Plastic Club, 247 South Camac Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107

Thank you to Bob Moore for the content of this post.

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Workshop

The Plastic Club Annual Workshop Art Show

The Plastic Club Annual Workshop Art Show

The Plastic Club holds eleven artist workshops every week, in which the Club supplies a well-lighted studio space and models, if required. 

These workshops are great incubators of artistic expression. Once a year, the Club has an exhibition of work done in these workshops — whether completed during the workshop or started in the workshop and completed at home.

The Annual Workshop Show, June 1st – June 27th, will open with a party on Saturday, June 1, from 7:00 – 9:00PM at The Plastic Club, 247 S. Camac St., Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-545-9324 info@plasticclub.org

Viewers of the exhibition will vote for their favorite works, and the top vote-getters will receive coupons for free workshops. (Workshops are inexpensive, but not free.)

Among the workshops are Clothed Portrait Model, Draped Figure, Life Model (Long pose), Clothed Model (Long pose), and Open Studio. (During the Open Studio, students work on their own projects and a still-life composition is available.) The full list of workshops is shown on the Club’s website, www.plasticclub.org/workshops.

The Annual Workshop Show can be viewed by the public during the opening party and at The Plastic Club‘s monthly Third Sunday Open Gallery, on June 16, from 1:00 to 4:00PM.

About The Plastic Club

The Plastic Club was founded in 1897 by a group of professional women artists At a time when already existing art clubs in the city were only open to men, the founders of the Plastic Club wanted a place for artists who were women to meet, exchange ideas, and exhibit their work. They wanted to bring experienced, professionals together with younger artists who were just beginning their careers.

Today, in a building purchased through member fundraising in 1909, the original mission of the now co-ed Plastic Club continues with 200+ members, ten open drawing sessions a week, and a year-round program of film, dance, music, poetry, salons discussion groups, community dinners, and other fun events.

The term “Plastic” refers to the “plastic” arts — malleable, changeable, and ever in-progress work. From the beginning the Club has been a home to artists of all media including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, printmaking, fiber arts, and more.

Thank you to Bob Moore for the content of this post.

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Stories

Stories to Tell

Stories Told in Pictures at The Plastic Club

April will be a time for story-telling at The Plastic Club, as the historic art club invites visual artists to show how they retell the world’s stories, whether drawn from holy books or comic books or the depths of their own imaginations.

The prospectus explains that works can be representational or abstract, based perhaps on literature or perhaps on popular genres or even current events. “It is your story to tell, using your special way of doing art.”

The prospectus quotes the poet Wallace Stevens for inspiration:
“They said, ‘You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.’ The man replied, ‘Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.'”

Stories to Tell at The Plastic Club

Stories to Tell Opening Reception Sunday, April 7th, 2:00 and 5:00 PM, with juror’s awards and announcement at 3:30 PM. The work can also be viewed by appointment or at The Plastic Club‘s special Third Sunday Open Gallery on Sunday, April 21 from 1 to 4 PM.

The Plastic Club. 247 South Camac Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 545-9324
info@plasticclub.org

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Plastic

Drawing Marathon, The Plastic Club

All Day Drawing Marathon at The Plastic Club

The annual Drawing Marathon is an art all day event; enjoy sketching, drawing, or painting at The Plastic Club on Sunday, March 10th, from 10:00am to 10:00pm.

247 South Camac Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

(215) 545-9324

info@plasticclub.org

Admission to the event is $15 on a come-and-go basis; pay once, then you can leave and re-enter as you see fit. Photography is not permitted.

The Plastic Club will provide live models and setups for still life, as well as tables, chairs, and easels, simply bring your own art materials. Simultaneous sessions will give you your choice of artistic opportunities. Plans call for life drawing, portrait drawing and painting, long and short poses and croquis, still life setups, and experiments in “noir lighting” in the Plastic Club’s blacked-out basement.

Coffee, donuts, lunch and dinner will be available for a contribution.

Don’t miss this chance to sharpen your image-making skills and mingle with other artists at The Plastic Club.

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Modern Times

Modern Times, Charles Demuth, Lancaster (In the Province No. 2)Lancaster (In the Province No. 2), 1920, by Charles Demuth, American, 1883 – 1935. Oil on canvas, 30 x 16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950-5-1.

World-class Modernism Exhibition at The Philadelphia Museum of Art

By Bob Moore

The works of art in the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘s Modern Times exhibition, covering a period of artistic upheaval from 1910 to 1950, are seldom unexpected or unfamiliar. The modernist trend which they embody is deeply etched into our cultural unconscious, the background or context to everything that has happened since in the art world. Marcel DuChamp‘s nude descending her staircase, Georgia O’Keefe‘s succulent flowers, Marsden Hartley‘s colorful World War I compositions: these were the visual soil that Americans like myself grew up in.

Modern Times, Alfred Stieglitz, The City of AmbitionThe City of Ambition, 1910 (negative); c. 1930 (print), by Alfred Stieglitz, American, 1871 – 1944. Gelatin silver print, image/sheet/mount: 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949-18-47.

Walking through the 160-some pieces in the exhibition is like paging through the Modern American Art section of an extensive History of Art, with few outright surprises.

What is surprising (at least to me) in this exhibition was how many of these works are owned outright by the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘ (PMA). Not on loan from some internationally-recognized museum, but property of the PMA. Ours, all ours. This highlights a side of the exhibit not about Art but about Acquisitions. PMA’s Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Rub, in a foreword to the associated book, notes that “It was during the 1940s that the PMA’s holding of modern European and American art were established through several important gifts…” including donations by Albert E. GallatinGeorgia O’Keefe and Alfred Steiglitz, and Walter and Louise Arensburg (not Annanberg, another Philadelphia philanthropist who bequeathed his collection instead to the rival Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).

Modern Times, Marsden Hartley, Painting No 4 (Black Horse)Painting No. 4 (A Black Horse), 1915, by Marsden Hartley, American, 1877 -1943. Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 31 5/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949-18-8

There are a few works in the show not owned (yet) by the PMA: the book identifies one statue lent by a Museum Trustee and some fourteen paintings (including Charles Demuth‘s sizzling Jazz lent by another Trustee, with a note hinting at their eventual acquisition by the Museum.

The Modern Times exhibition curator was Jessica Todd Smith. In an essay in the associated book, she tells how the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) pioneered Modern Art in Philadelphia. But an ill-fated one-month PAFA exhibition of works from the collection of Albert C. Barnes in 1923 caused a ridiculous public outcry (the work was “trash,” and “the creations of a disintegrating mind,” said reviewers; think of peasants with torches and pitchforks).

Smith says the “critical reaction to the Barnes collection in 1923 scared PAFA’s board from presenting any further exhibitions of modern art until the 1950s…” The controversy also led to Barnes’ alienation from the Philadelphia art scene and all that followed. See Philadelphia Inquirer, Barnes at the Pennsylvania Academy: A scandal in 1923, May 4, 2012, by much-missed art critic Ed Sozanski.

The PMA then “picked up the modernist gauntlet,” Smith writes, under museum director Fiske Kimball. Smith says other figures in PMA’s acquisition of American Modern Art included R. Sturgis Ingersoll and Carl Zigrosser.

In a footnote 41 to her essay, Smith notes that some work was excluded from the exhibition, including “work that wholeheartedly embraces abstraction to the exclusion of any hints of figuration, leaving out most geometric abstraction and, on the more painterly end of the spectrum, Abstract Expressionism…” She also regretted that the museum had holes in its collections, including Social Realism, Regionalism, Native American, and Central and South American art.

In footnote 25, Smith lists the various art clubs that kept Modern Art alive in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Sketch Club and the Philadelphia Art Alliance — but most notably not including the Plastic Club, an artists’ club which has been around since 1897.

The drama of acquisition politics and finance aside, however, the work in the Modern Times  show is a world-class exhibition put on single-handedly by our local museum. Don’t miss it!

MODERN TIMES: American Art 1910 – 1950Philadelphia Museum of Art April 18-September 3, 2018

(Associated Book) AMERICAN MODERNISM: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Jessica Todd Smith

Thank you to Bob Moore for the content of this post.

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