DoNArTNeWs

Karen M contacted DoN prior to the start of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours East weekend to tip him off to drive by the baseball field on Wharton Street near Geno’s and Pat’s Steaks.  Karen and DoN talked recently about the economic situation of artists, the unreliability of sales and income to cover the expense of making art.  Art costs money, usually.  Karen M and Anthony C have been tagging the city, graffiti style, with their own collectible paintings.  Using the same technique as their high end paintings on canvas, the pair uses found cardboard and posters to paint their iconic portraits, like Wisdom Kid, with stencils and spray paint, then install them where people can steal the art.  During the recent Philadelphia Open Studio Tours West, they stapled a beautiful portrait on glittery paper to the bedraggled knit-bombed telephone pole at the end of DoN’s block.  Luckily while walking KaTy the ArT DoG and Lady Doofus, the geriatric St. Bernard / Chihuahua, DoN was able to carefully retrieve the piece, the scars torn into the paper from the staples a secret prize of provenance.  Collectors across South Philly follow their messages, like the one DoN was texted, to go to a particular spot for some prime art loot.  It’s all the fun of stealing without any of the guilt.  Karen M and Anthony C prove that art can be free and fun, provocative and intellectual, thoughtful and carefree in a public arena with no fees, no charges, no costs, no juries, dealers or committees or money.  Free Art = Free Money.

Karen M & Anthony C,  Street and Free Art.

Read more of DoN’s art adventures at Philly.SideArts.

Photos by DoN.

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011, Tim McFarlane in Old City, Saturday, October 15th.

Tim McFarlane’s studio in the heart of Old City Philadelphia is the archetypical artists’ loft, a steep climb up three pea green flights of stairs to arrive gasping into a high ceilinged loft space overlooking Third Street right off of Market.  The old industrial space is divided into three studios: Carol Royer’s figurative work greets you at the end of the epic climb, John Gatti has a spacious room in the middle and Tim McFarlane’s studio has windows overlooking the street.  John was painting while lola, Spike & DoN luxuriated in Tim’s studio filled with his exuberant stylized abstract paintings arrayed from floor to ceiling, paint splattered everywhere, outlines of canvases layered over years of work, brushes and paints poking out of cubbies - just like you imagine an artists’ studio to be.  Tim McFarlane has participated in the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours for many years, this year he was a cover model for the catalog, allowing the public to see the progress he’s accomplished in his art over the years.  The light shining in from being near the river glows into the space activating the color fields vibrating in the paintings, DoN thought about how this is the way a true artist lives, in a bright airy studio right in the hub of the lively contemporary arts scene in Old City with the energy and time to think big.

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011, Tim McFarlane

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011, Tim McFarlane

The swirly cellular structures from Tim McFarlane’s memorable abstract paintings are still present and prominent in his new work but now layers of patterns from stencils are laid in then painted over and into, deep layers of color, shape and contrasts make his individual canvasses vibrate.   A room full of Tim’s works in various stages of progress is really a privileged experience because his work is usually seen only in art galleries like Bridgette Mayer Gallery on Walnut Street.  In fact, Tim McFarlane’s work will be included in the upcoming show, Karmic Abstraction, November 15th through December 31, 2011 - “The show’s title reflects gallerist Bridgette Mayer’s “interest in the idea of the karmic cycle of an artist’s history of painting and ideas.” The selected works, by sixteen nationally- and internationally-recognized artists reveals, “how, at a given moment in time, standing in front of a work of art, the viewer is faced with the multiple layers and concepts that create a painting as well as a lifetime of ideas, actions and history that make up the career and art history of a contemporary artist.” (Bridgette Mayer Gallery website).

John Gatti.  DoN loves this picture of the artists’ studio, comparing and contrasting the shapes, tones and marks on panels against one another creates an energy field of color.

Photos by DoN.

Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery

Dear Mad, I Really Like Your Hair! Love Johnny, hair strands from Jessica Hoffman’s head in glassine envelopes.

Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery

Slideshow, vials of shavings from photographic slides the artist found.  Hoffman scraped off bits of each slide, saved the scrapings, then presents the slide show with the bits of image removed.  Each vial is labeled with the trip, location and time period the slides were taken.

Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery

Talent Show, split screen video footage projected on the wall.

DoN saw this show two weeks ago and has thought about it often as he scooted around town seeing art over the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011 festival, leaving little time to report.  But Jessica Hoffman’s show is about memory and the passage of time.  Forever and After incorporates three major narrative elements used in ways that look at the passage of time in abstract even obtuse angles.  “Slideshow is an investigation of memory, using a collection of found slides from the 1960s and 1970s shot throughout Europe and the United States by the same person.  Talent Show is a split screen video piece using footage shot at a school talent show on the left and my own version of the performances on the right.  Dear Mad, I really like your hair today! Love, Johnny is an installation inspired by a box of hundreds of love letters found on the street. - HeavyBubble website”  Each element of the installation recaptures moments in time that are personal, private, secret presenting them in Dada-ist style - should DoN believe that the love letters were found on the street?  Did Jessica really sit and scrape off bits of image from hundreds of slides?  The split screen throw back style to the Woodstock movie era of the video could have been shot over the Summer.  It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, making found objects or finding found objects, then arraying them exquisite corpse style creates a strange narrative as the mind tries to grasp the connections.  At 110 Church Street Gallery, Jessica Hoffman’s installation, Forever and After, combines sweet nostalgia, contemporary oblique strategies and pure, clean, simple presentation to take the viewer on a time trip back from the future.

Read more at Philly.SideArts

Photos by DoN.

Bluestone Fine Art Gallery: Amie Potsic, Danielle Bursk and Gregory Brellochs

DoN had not been to Old City in a long while for a First Friday art crawl, parking and traffic sucks, so, DoN took the bus.  $2.00! with live entertainment included ; ), and a chance to watch the cityscape go by, delivering DoN to the intersection of Market & 3rd Streets right into the hubbub of street artists, musicians and even a puppeteer capitalizing on the monthly crowds of young couples and art lovers.  A short stroll down Third to Vine Street is the new Bluestone Fine Art Gallery, just around the corner from the Painted Bride.  The current show includes work by three artists - Amie Potsic’s photographs, Danielle Bursk’s ink on paper and Gregory Brellochs‘ charcoal and ink drawings.  The artists are using different media but the theme of the wonders of nature run through the show like a stream of consciousness.

Bluestone Fine Art Gallery: Amie Potsic

Amie Potsic, Made in China: Yangtze River, archival pigment print

“My mission is to create a process, an action comes from that, whether it’s experiencing more art or it’s doing something political.  That’s the hope, I mean, so,  you see something like this, you see something in these images and you have a conversation about it, then you see images about that in the news, then you get an e-mail about signing a petition, and then you see a thing about going to a demonstration and you do something!”  Amie Potsic’s scroll-like photographs of trees have a sense of being foreign, the Chinese calligraphy, done by a poet in Taiwan, and the perpendicular typography subtly leads the mind’s eye across the ocean to a distant land.  But these trees are probably shot right here in Philly presenting the bewildering notion that maybe China owns these trees and therefore made them.

“Because it’s a cumulative effect of impressions and influences and with all that, nobody does anything.  Part of the reason I do this work, some of it was done in Rittenhouse Square, the most chic section of Philly, and there was a very graphic demonstration by a Chinese group that follow the Falun Gong religion, which essentially is Buddhism.  But you’re not allowed to practice organized religion in China in that way.  So people were jailed and tortured physically and there was a demonstration in the middle of Rittenhouse Square with patients on gurneys being mock-tortured, it was shocking, I got the materials they were handing out and that made me reference my audience with the Dalai Lama and learning about what happened in Tibet and putting those two things together.  At the same time I was photographing images of trees in this sort of long scroll format and realized they look like Chinese scroll prints, I saw the demonstration and had been thinking of these issues and all these things came together to form this project.”  The metaphors, memes and memories exuding from Potsic’s photographs are like an epic poem which stirs the mind with beauty, mystery, wonder with trepidation for the future and forgotten lessons from the past.

Amie Potsic @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery in Old City, Philadelphia.

Danielle Bursk, Avalon, ink on paper @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery

Danielle Bursk, ink on paper @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery

Danielle Bursk, ink on paper @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery

DoN commented to Danielle Bursk that he noticed her drawings now include a defined horizon.  “The horizon line is the most control you can exert as an artist and I just wanted to try something that was more of a landscape…but the work is also inspired by the ocean.  I grew up in Florida, I spent a lot of time at the beach, I still go to the beach quite a bit, if you just sit and stare at the ocean there’s a lot that goes on.  I don’t like it to be too representational, so if you approach it thinking that way you can see that it also looks like hills or a tidal wave, with all my work I like an open ended-ness where you can bring what you want to it and interpret it how you want.  So, yes, there’s definitely a horizon line, it’s sort of a landscape but not quite.”  DoN also noted that Bursk’s drawings could be considered still life like a close up of fabric or fur, “…even something under a microscope.”  Danielle Bursk explained to DoN how she’s trying new things like working with a square image as opposed to rectilinear and smaller works using oblique strategies to force changes in her work with arbitrary constraints.  Even though the horizon line is consistent across the smaller works in the show, each one is unique and separate from the others.  “In fact, I took each one off the wall before I started the next one because I didn’t want to be influenced by it, I was excited when I looked back because some are really dark, some are a little lighter, some have bigger movements, so they all work very differently.”

Gregory Brellochs @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery

Forest Floor, graphite on paper, Gregory Brellochs @ Bluestone Fine Art Gallery.

Gregory Brellochs is an art professor at Camden County College and is a father of two, “I came on there seven years ago now, they brought me in to teach sculpture and design…and it really gives me the opportunity to shape the program, work with the curriculum, and have direct contact with a lot of the students and we’ve turned it into a much stronger transfer program.”  DoN asked where Brellochs finds time to create his heroically scaled drawings?  “I just got done with these large curving drawings, you saw one at the CFEVA gallery, that was the fourth one that I’ve done and there’s one that I thought I had finished maybe a year ago and then I just had to go back in and basically quadrupled the detail.  The minuteness of the branches and roots, that became the longest drawing that I’ve ever done, the most labor intensive went over four hundred hours of drawing.  Um, but, it’s something I love to do.  And once the kids are in bed, I make a pot of coffee and up to the studio I go to work until I’m too tired.”

DoN asked if the images came out of Gregory’s mind?  “Yeah, I always work from my imagination and it’s really important to me that that’s how I arrive at that image because it’s not meant to be just a facsimile of Nature, a repetition of something that exists but something that really comes out of the mind’s eye.  All as a process of drawing, so that sometimes I don’t start with a composition in mind but a general form language…working with tree root-like structures I kind of allow it to evolve and I find that I am much more in tune with the work when I approach it that way without preliminary sketches or some kind of fixed idea in mind, it allows me to breathe life into the work because it evolves organically.”

The Bluestone Gallery of Fine Art will be open this weekend, October 15th and 16th, as part of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011,  Gregory Brellochs will be hosting.

Photos by DoN

Haus of DoN, Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours is the best value in artist public relations available to artists looking to promote their public image in the Philadelphia region.  In it’s twelfth year, the city wide art event has artists of all stripes opening their studios to the public – no kidding, a public art event of regional scope with many of the town’s top artists welcoming visitors into their think tanks.   The event is imbued with freedom, sharing, transparency, creativity and cooperation along with healthy American spirited competition.  The open-ness of Philadelphia Open Studio Tours is the coolest part; visitors experience environments that normally are private spaces where artists create and folks are not just allowed but encouraged to go behind the scenes. DoN’s claim that POST is the best value from a PR perspective is based on a cost/benefit analysis and target audience response.

POST offered a substantial early entry discount for artists, providing entrants with an artist profile web page with links on their comprehensive web site, listing in the information packed tour book with maps of every corner of the city inhabited by artists, a city and region wide advertising campaign, with banners, posters and art cards strategically supplied to almost 100 locations likely to attract interest to the appropriate demographic as well as special events, venues and workshops for artists whose studio is far off the beaten path.  POST’s goal was to get the right materials into the hands of art tourists likely to use them in a real way.  Every visitor to Haus of DoN held a curled back copy of the glossy catalog with their itinerary planned out to cover the neighborhood they had chosen to explore.  Each participating artist is provided with posters, art cards, catalogs and red balloons to promote their studio; the red balloons are a simple, effective signal to art crawlers that they’re heading in the right direction.

DoN’s decision to pay the $45 entry fee back in early Spring brought many dedicated friends and art enthusiasts to the Haus of DoN, South of South Street, a mostly residential area not near many commercial businesses.  The event pushed DoN to re-organize and display the wide array of interests he explores as part of his multimedia empire.  DoN had to spend no other money to promote the event instead advertising through FaceBook and DoNArTNeWs; no new art card this year, even though post cards are cheap to print and fun to design, mailing is costly and impact difficult to track.  DoN has had art cards returned by the Post Office months after the event was over.   DoN promoted the annual art crawl event on DoNBrewerMultimedia home page, on DoNBrewerMultimedia YouTube channel,  @DoNNieBeat58 on Twitter and Philly.SideArts.com, all free media outlets that directly targeted people interested in arts and culture.

Good advise from Ann Koivunen, director of exhibitions for POST, led DoN to think about what he wanted to present to the public and ponder his goals for the event; DoN decided to put on an art show.  Simply displaying photos, graphics, paintings and drawings in a beautiful, clean, pure way opened an opportunity to engage with visitors about what DoN does, his interests and connections and get his business card into the hands of each visitor.  The result is DoN met and interacted with more than fifty different citizens interested in the arts, including gallery owners, art curators, educators, fellow photographers, new neighbors, old friends and colleagues, he gathered contact information, intercepted  feedback on what people like about his art and experienced an authentic feeling of community for well less than a dollar per head including Candy Corn and Sweetzels  Ginger Snaps. 

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011 continues October 15^th & 16^th, 2011 for studios East of Broad Street.

Super Nova, Photoshop collage, digital print, DoN Brewer, 2011

Decorating the Haus of DoN has been very gratifying, reinforcing the DoN brand with his abstract landscape photographs, including the “light being” series, original graphic prints and oil paintings, setting tableau’s and displays throughout the studio and is ready for visitors.  DoN’s body of work has grown substantially, DoN’s first creative job was Display Manager for a department store retail chain in the 1970’s, tapping into those skills has been nostalgic and liberating, marketing DoN’s product line like he did in the garden department at J.M. Fields.  Usually DoN’s major art works are packed and ready to show when opportunities arise and the Haus is decorated with the works of DuSold, DuPree, Stango and outsider artist Danny Gayder, the work of Masters influencing the path of DoN’s interests and goals.  The DoN collection would not exist if not for the influences of artist friends and mentors as well as collectors, helping refine DoN’s eye and continue art production with confidence.  After weeks of preparation DoN is looking forward optimistically for a delightful weekend of seeing old and new friends and sharing his art.  

The Haus of DoN is dedicated to all the artists participating in Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011; DoN understands the aches and pains of finishing projects, solving problems and decision-making involved in making an art work space inviting to visitors.  Thank you to the Center for Emerging Visual Artists for undertaking the task of organizing the citywide art event that is unique to Philadelphia.  Thank you to all the readers of DoNArTNeWs and Philly.SideArts; DoN is grateful to all the artists who share their skills, talents and stories for the art enthusiasts not just in Philly but around the world who follow DoN’s incursions into the realms of the art world throughout the city.  This weekend is also the opening of a month long exhibition by the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the oldest photography society in America, at the Plastic Club with opening receptions each Sunday afternoon 2:00 - 5:00 PM; DoN has two favorite photographs included in the prestigious show of fine art photography.

A special shout-out to DoN’s nephew Bud Irwin serving in the Army in Afghanistan; knowing Buddy’s marching across arid desert mountains loaded with gear makes DoN stronger and braver to make new work, produce more videos, write more reviews, do more crunches at the gym and plan challenging new projects for the future.  Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011 is an opportunity to be optimistic, to brush off the haters, ignore the art bullies, defy the critics, escape the economic reality and be free to be an artist living, working and producing art in America.  The Haus of DoN, 2028 Pemberton Street, welcomes you.

LoVe

DoN

Ann Koivunen is the Director of Studio Tours and Exhibitions for Philadelphia Open Studio Tours, one of the top art events of its kind in the USA.  Ann offers great advice on what to do and what not to do to have a successful, fun event.  The clip is nine minutes, so get a cup of coffee and sit a spell, Ann has a wonderful perspective on POST.   DoNBrewerMultimedia is participating in POST 2011, October 1 & 2, 12 - 6:00PM, check the awesome on-line resources for information on neighborhoods and events at the POST website.

Video by DoNBrewerMultimedia

DoN has been bustling around the studio getting ready for POST, Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011.  While painting walls, rearranging furniture and making new works, DoN has been absorbed in implementing suggestions made by Todd Hestand @ The Corzo Center for the Creative Economy.  DoN is improving his social networking by having DoNArTNeWs art blog synergize with the various communications options available like FaceBook (DoNArTNeWs - DoN Brewer Art Review), YouTube (DoNArTNeWs - DoNBrewerMultimedia) and Twitter (@DoNNieBeat58).  By simply consolidating the information on DoN’s homepage, DoNBrewerMultimedia, visitors now see all the options to connect with DoNArTNeWs and DoN’s art work. writing, information, promotions and videos in one place.

The DoNArTNeWs FaceBook fan page has been a particular challenge with interesting rewards.  When DoN posts a blog on DoNArTNeWs or Philly.SideArts, part of the process is “advertising” the story on Facebook, promoting the story on as many relevant art “fan pages” and “group pages” as possible.  The DoNArTNeWs fan page automatically posts a tweet on Twitter and already DoN is trending with new followers.  DoN has a major photography show at the Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art, the FaceBook events feature is an easy way to contact all your “friends” and estimate how many people will actually show up at the event.  Here’s the rub, you may have to contact each page and person individually to “like” your page, or reciprocate your link, or comment on a post.  DoN asked Todd Hestand how much time he spends per day promoting Philly.SideArts on social networks, “About two hours.”

Video will be a big part of future DoNArTNeWs reports making YouTube integral to the whole.  With HD quality video built into most digital cameras and smart phones, it makes sense to take a little time to make a movie, especially now that iMovie is so easy.  DoN has a cache of unseen footage that has been languishing since last Summer when he had to disassemble his video suite due to unforeseen forces.  But with POST forcing a studio clean-up, soon some major stories will include video clips as well as photographs and reviews.

August turned out to be a busy, creative time for DoN, making new work, participating in art shows, published in two art books, Da Vinci Art Alliance Then and Now: 1931 - 2011 (available on Amazon.com) and 175 Years of Reflection, Laurel Hill Cemetery 1836 - 2011 (available in the Laurel Hill Cemetery gift shop, really, there’s a gift shop), well received articles at the Philly.SideArts blog and a record number of page views on DoNArTNeWs.  It is such an honor to be included in two books documenting art history in Philly and to be recognized as “the press” by so many galleries and artists.  Thank you so much to all the fans of DoNArTNeWs, the support and feedback inspires DoN to keep it up.  Look for new and improved DoNArTNeWs and Philly.SideArts stories and if you’re on FaceBook please “like” the fan pages of the organizations you support, these pages are good resources for what’s happening on the art scene in Philly and opportunities for you to participate in our burgeoning creative economy.