I want to start with Astrid Bowlby’s drawings at Gallery Joe, in Old City, but I don’t have an image, so you’ll have to go to Gallery Joe’s Website to see what she’s up to. (By the way, Bowlby’s in a show that opened yesterday at the Drawing Center, 35 Wooster St., New York, so she’s up to a lot.) I’m thinking topography as I walk out of the show at Gallery Joe–and hairnets and intense energy fields.
And as usual I was in love with the work at the Clay Studio. I have to start by confessing that I never met a teapot I didn’t like, and teapots were rife. Above is one of several by Sam Chung in the niche on the first floor. This one reminded me of those traditional Japanese hair-dos. Others had subtle glazes that reminded me of skin and fingerprints.
Upstairs in the “Tea for Two, Table for Two” show, the tea sets stole the show from the table settings. Of course, unlike plates, only the insides of teapots need to be functional, leaving a lot of room on the exterior for creativity. This one is by Heeseung Lee and the next one is by Lisa Orr. Ryan Fitzer had a beautiful set that implied tremendous weight, and Geoffrey Wheeler’s pot and cups were peachy toned with belly buttons and shapes suggestive of bodies, without being too literal. Lots more worth seeing there. 
West of Old City the usual crazy scene at Space 1026 included hand drawn (campaign pin) buttons for sale, bad-boy cartoons, some quite beautiful, from Canadian cartoonist Gerard Doody, and a three-day stencil show, which was chock-full of political art. The stencil here is by Roger Peat, with an asking price of $8.
And even further West, at Vox Populi (215-568-5513), M. Ho’s newsprint pages covered with images of what looked like the war in Iraq and news-like columns of color blocks and collaged flowers caught my daughter’s eye.
Well, that includes only stuff I saw. There’s lots more out there. It’s a big city with a lot of art.
