The reason DoN is promoting Kodak is because they are an American manufacturing company in Rochester, NY, USA, Planet Earth, Milky Way, they invented digital photography and they recently declared bankruptcy. Kodak has a long history, “Kodak has made it easy to enjoy your pictures. The expression ‘You Press the Button, We do the rest’ was a common advertising slogan in the 1890s. This familiar expression was also set to music. Visit our interactive history of Kodak products to listen and see some of today’s latest digital products and our early film and cameras from the 1880s.” Kodak website. DoN used a Kodak Brownie camera growing up and still relies on the reliable quality and customer support of Kodak for his Kodak Easyshare Z981 14 MP Digital Camera with Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon 26xWide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom Lens and 3.0-Inch LCD Sreen to create images for DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia art blog and Side Arts Philadelphia art blog. So, did DoN pick a loser in Kodak as an advertising affiliate? Coffee did shoot out DoN’s nose as the news of Kodak’s bankruptcy crawled across the bottom of Morning Joe brought to you by Starbucks.
DoNArTNeWs is using affiliate marketing, peppering the text with hyperlinks and ads, to generate revenue to move to an improved WordPress platform; clicking links and ads may take you to website for companies like Kodak which DoN personally uses in his art or blogging or to related resources like artist’s websites. If you buy a product as a result of clicking a link in the art blog or the DoNArTNeWs sidebar a commission is generated for DoNArTNeWs.
Hayley Tomlinson, One Accolade I Must Achieve To Become A Successfully Working Artist, digital print featuring a hand made ribbon at Prelude Gallery, January 13th, 2nd Friday in Center City.
DoNasked Hayley Tomlinson about the eclectic collection of art objects she’s showing at Prelude Gallery including photography, prints, fiber and needle-work. “I‘m interested in everything. I do some blogging on Tumblr and what I really like is looking at the images on Tumblr and seeing what is trending? What are people interested in?” Giggles. “What I think about is, how can I capitalize on that and how can I gain popularity and become more well known. But, also I kind of just think when I make things wouldn’t it be funny if I just made this. Like I made a drawing of a toilet in a forest of birch trees.” Giggles. “I thought it was funny because I hate the thought of having to go to the bathroom in the woods but I guess if there are toilets in there but then I guess I‘d be OK.”
“Ithink about things I desire and things I fear like how can I be a better artist? And how can I be a more successful well known artist which is what the photographs are about.” DoN noted the portraiture with ribbons and how they stand out. “There are four ribbons First, Second, Third and Honorable Mention. These two are Third Place and Honorable Mention, I think they’re the two photographs that have been most successful and most successfully represented my Adobe Photoshop skills. I was thinking, I‘m in Philadelphia and what do Ineed to do in Philadelphia to be more well known. And one is being featured on the art blog. And that ended up happening. I had an article on the art blog and they showed that photograph. The other photograph is about the blog Tumblr which I think is very important for contemporary art, especially young people in art. People see my work on Tumblr and really respond to it, then that will really help me get my name out.”
Blogging for DoNArTNeWs and Side Arts is one of those opportunities people talk about when they say, “Do what you love,” DoN loves writing about Philadelphia art, artists, photographers, designers, sculptors and cultural leaders of all stripes. Helping the creative community get publicity is self serving and generative simultaneously resulting in the opportunity to publish this book. Thank you to the Philadelphia art community for accepting DoNArTNeWs and DoN Brewer on Side Arts as a reliable art review resource . Thank you to Philly Side Arts for helping DoN think bigger. Thank you to Lilliana S. Didovic for trusting me with Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic (Volume 1).
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 Piffarothe 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.
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?
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.
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.
The Art Ability International Juried Exhibition of Art and Fine Crafts show at Bryn Mawr Rehab Center in Malvern is an annual event that DoN looks forward to for many reasons. First, Art Ability is a great art show with outstanding work by hundreds of artists from 35 states and seven countries in all kinds of media from painting, drawing, collage, mixed media, sculpture and DoN’s personal interest, photography. Secondly, this is the third year DoN has been included in the show, “light beings (Lorraine and Charles)“, an abstract landscape photo dedicated to my late Great Aunt and Uncle, was selected by the esteemed panel of jurors from hundreds of entries. DoN is honored to be included in the annual exclusive art event, being featured in the excellent glossy catalog and to be treated to a wonderful evening of dining, meeting artists and collectors at the Patron’s Reception held November 5, 2011.
Photography is well represented in the show, when DoN delivered his piece to Bryn Mawr Rehab he got a sneak peak at the art intake and right away was taken with several large photographs by Allen Bryan. The wide aspect ratio and densely detailed dream-scapes have all the feel of reality but with unnatural elements, transitions and oblique views, kind of like waking up from a dream. Indeed, the photo collage Open Box Story won Best in Show, the Charles W. Hennessy Artist Award with proceeds from the Charles W. Hennessy Art Ability Endowment Fund, selected by judges Teresa Jaynes, John Ollman and Ingrid Shaffner. DoN spoke with the artist at the reception and he confirmed the surrealist work is created with his own photographs which he expertly manipulates with Photoshop, the large format print and subtle frame are exquisitely crafted. The photo above is not the winning piece but if you visit his website, or better yet go to the show which is free and open to the public daily through mid January 2012, you will experience a masterful artwork that will confound and intrigue the senses.
Read more about DoN’s Art Ability experiences at Philly.SideArts and watch for more reports about this expansive art exhibition.
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.
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.
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.
Author and art-marketing consultant Alyson B. Stanfield, of ArtBizCoach.com, focuses on sharing the artwork directly with potential buyers through electronic and traditional communication outlets—in a manner that is comfortable, not artificial. Artists match Internet marketing strategies with sincere personal skills to take charge of their art careers.
The book includes online worksheets and downloads.
