DoNArTNeWs

Kevin Lehman, The Need for Fundamental Change @ University of the Arts, Hamilton Hall Public Arts Initiative, Broad and Pine Streets, Philadelphia.

DoN walked past the sculpture vitrines in front of the University of the Arts and it appeared one of the sculptures had been pulled loose.  It was January 3rd and the Mummers Parade crowd can get pretty rowdy, generally Philadelphians are art friendly but you never know.  DoN felt anger and disgust that someone had damaged a public art piece, especially since some very beautiful and ephemeral pieces have graced the vitrines over the years with no vandalism.

But, this piece looks like it was moved across the plaza.  In the light of day the reality of the installation came together - the sculpture had actually pulled itself loose from it’s mooring near the grand stairs to the Temple and crawled to the garden wall leaving a trail of wire and debris behind.  In the garden, pod-like ceramic pots are birthing televisions and computer monitors, while the master motherboard hovers nearby protecting the brood.  Smaller pots have already invaded the farther reaches of the Japanese-ish stone garden connected by umbilical cords of red wire to the mother pods.  Kevin Lehman’s studio is in Lancaster PA.

Kevin Lehman, The Need for Fundamental Change @ University of the Arts Hamilton Hall Public Arts Initiative.

Kevin Lehman, The Need for Fundamental Change is the artist’s MFA Thesis Exhibition through January 15th, 2012.  For more information on the Hamilton Hall Public Arts Initiative contact jgirandola@uarts.edu

Kevin Lehman, The Need for Fundamental Change @ University of the Arts Hamilton Hall Public Arts Initiative

Kevin Lehman, The Need for Fundamental Change @ University of the Arts Hamilton Hall Public Arts Initiative

Photos by DoN Brewer

Sanding Ovations, Treasure Island, Florida

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 Piffaro the 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.

View a clip from the Vespers premier in 2008, DoNBrewerMultimedia on YouTube.

DoN

Photographs by DoN Brewer shot with

Kodak Digital Cameras

Beverly Kohn, Resting Deer, Art Ability International Juried Exhibition of Art & Fine Craft @ Bryn Mawr Rehab Center.

Beverly Kohn won Honorable Mention in the category of Fiber Arts, Glass and Fine Crafts at the Art Ability Exhibition.  The gorgeous piece of a fiber wrapped deer feels so modern, like Jeff Koons or DuChamp, not crafty at all but using simple, nostalgic materials and shapes, the sculpture mixes media in a delightful and desirable design.  Click the thumbnail for a close up.

Elizabeth Core at Art Ability International Juried Exhibition of Art & Fine Craft @ Bryn Mawr Rehab Center.  The balance of color, hue, tone and textures mingled with sophisticated pattern and composition is exuberantly engaging.

Click the thumbail to check out Sriharsha Sukla, Bombay 01, collage.  The artist lives in Cuttack, Orissa, India, and has been a part of Art Ability International Juried Exhibition of Art & Fine Craft @ Bryn Mawr Rehab Center for many years, submitting fascinatingly detailed collages, so painterly and naturalistic they appear photographic from a distance.

“The Art Ability Program at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital is a year-long program which serves as a showcase for, and celebration of, artists with disabilities. Through art, we hope to inspire patients to reach beyond their limitations, and to encourage people with disabilities to explore their own creativity.

Established in 1996, Art Ability includes the following major components: an annual international juried exhibition and sale of art and fine crafts produced by individuals with disabilities; community outreach and education opportunities including satellite exhibitions and interactive demo days; our permanent collection of artwork and the incorporation of artwork into the patient experience; and a corporate art acquisition program.

The Program’s goal is to foster a better appreciation of people with disabilities through the achievements and stories of our artists. As art enriches their lives, we hope their creativity, talent and exuberant spirit will enrich your life.” - Art Ability

Read DoNArTNeWs report about Allen Bryan, Art Ability Artist

Read more at Philly Side Arts

Photographs by DoN Brewer shot exclusively with

Allison Kaufman talks about Dancing with Divorced Men, a series of photos and video at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, October 27th, 2011.

Hear Ana B. Hernandez‘ artist talk at Philly.SideArts.

• “Modulate” A Spotlight Exhibition featuring Career Development Program Fellows Ana B. Hernandez and Allison Kaufman

  October 26 - November 22, 2011

  The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, 237 S. 18th Street, The Barclay, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Photos and video by DoNBrewerMultimedia.

Jerry Kaba at The Crane Arts Center

DoN had the photos and the interview from a Second Thursday art crawl September 8th, 2011 at the Crane Center for the Arts in Fishtown.  But, DoN could not find the artist’s name!?!  By chance, Jerry KaBa’s business card surfaced and DoN can now share with you the scariest Halloween costume design - ever!

Video & Photos by DoNBrewerMultimedia

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.

Paige West, Founder and Curator of West Collection of Contemporary Art, Les Stoetzel, Director of West Collection and Gary Steuer, Chief Cultural Officer, City of Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture & the Creative Economy answer questions about the expanded West Collects Prize after Mayor Michael Nutter’s announcement at Philadelphia City Hall.  West Collects has increased their budget and is dedicating $100,000.00 to collect art from Philadelphia artists to be exhibited in the gallery and halls at Philadelphia City Hall for six months next year.

Video by DoN Brewer

Erin Rose-Boyle, This is Not My Home - 3 Rooms 3 Views @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art.  The gallery in the park on the beautiful Cooper River provides opportunities for artists to create site specific work like Erin Rose-Boyle’s installation of 3 sculptures occupying their own room.  Rose-Boyle mashes metaphors and memes into evocative constructions of simple materials like paper, foam and tape that speak of home, isolation and self awareness.  DoN asked Erin about the all the feet in her installation? “They’re mine, I made a mold…they ground me.”

Photographs & video by DoNBrewerMultimedia

HD Video - watch in full screen mode - DoN

Video by DoNBrewerMultimedia

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Every corner of the mammoth Icebox Gallery in the Crane Arts Center is activated with visual signs, symbols and sensory stimuli.  Last January curator Amie Potsic sent a call for ideas to the Fellows of The Center for Emerging Visual Artists for the huge art space in Fishtown.  Site specific works were encouraged, developed and confirmed by April and last week all the pieces fell into place and Construct, an invigorating, unique, studied look at contemporary art and how assemblage, construction and collage is integral to the new way of seeing.  The photo above looks so Rauschenberg but it’s mash-up of two large installations, one a trippy multiple collage by Jennifer Williams applied directly on the walls and a large assemblage by Don Edler that sprawls across the concrete floor like a drift of entrancing debris.

Don Edler @  The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Mami Kato in coming to the end of a long relationship with the special Japanese grass she uses to create the sinuous sculptures which take years to make to a new direction using resin for the bio-morphic sculpture in the foreground.  Her work looks so beautiful in the Gray Area, tying up the space in a confounding knot of dense yet floaty tubules.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Laureen Griffin plays with styles, textures, composition and sexual role models - huh?  DoN overheard a comment, “What’s that girl doing in the chair?”  The girl is dressed quite masculine, like a business woman, reading a paper, a strong contemporary image of a black woman set against the grain of an antebellum manor.  Intensely conflicting narratives zipped through DoN’s neural network from stories embedded in the fabric, visual cues in the styling and strangely involving decor.  Gorgeous!

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Kimberly Witham was concerned for a moment that the photographs that are so huge in her studio would seem dwarfed by the scale of Icebox, but arrayed salon style, the still life photographs using dead animals, wallpaper and found objects read perfectly well.  The beautifully rendered still life photographs are so bitter sweet, we get to look at beautiful creatures living on after death in a work of art, an exquisite corpse of a different kind.  Witham’s photographs drew a crowd of people who stood and stared a long time; the mixture of repulsion and fascination, ugly and beautiful, cheery and morbid strums a tender nerve.  And the concept that raw steak is not just the color of cabbage roses but can be sexually Dali-nian is genius.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Alison Stigora, Whirlwind, charred wood, site specific installation.  Like a charcoal drawing in space, Whirlwind is a feat of imagination swirling up like a tornado; Stigora and a friend hand-charred the wood, pulling logs from the fire and dousing them with water to preserve the scarred luminous iridescence of the wood for the construction.  Alison wants all DoNsters to know she is not a pyromaniac, having a healthy fear of fire and does not play with matches.  The imposing sculpture continues Stigora’s investigation into the fractal like forms of the natural world, especially trees and all that art owes to them.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Alison Stigora, Whirlwind, detail.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Lewis Colburn was seated atop a 15 foot wooden tower where he typed War and Peace by Tolstoy during a performance at the opening reception; Colburn typed out part of the book relating to a theory about history and calculus, a repetitive process which spilled a long stream of paper into a puddle on the floor.  The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Lewis Colburn @ The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Maggie Mills has five paintings included in the exhibit, each artwork representing a bit of the anxiety she feels about the political and ecological environment her young daughter is growing up in.  Mills’ paintings incorporate compressed narratives, coupled with coming of age incidents and rituals.  In each of the paintings, young people are involved in a manner of play that involves constructions like kites but in a dream state haunted by angst, danger and fear for the future.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Swim Team, oil on panel, Maggie Mills @ The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Panoramic shot of the Icebox Gallery,  The Center for Emerging Visual Artists - Construct @ Crane Arts Center.

Artists exhibiting are: Noah Addis, Arden Bendler Browning, Lewis Colburn, Don Edler, Laureen Griffin, Jordan Griska, Ana B. Hernandez, Mami Kato, Allison Kaufman, Daniel Kornrumpf, Maggie Mills, Tim Portlock, Alison Stigora, Jennifer Williams, Kimberly Witham, and Bohyun Yoon.

Construct is on view through June 29th, a short run for such a big show but exhilarating in it’s scope, direction and audacity.

Photos by DoN.