January 2006 Archive

Weekly Update – Chicago at PAFA

This week’s Weekly includes my preview of “Art in Chicago” opening Friday at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Here’s the art page and below is the copy with some additional pictures. [Note: Curator Robert Cozzolino posted a correction to some statements in this preview. For his comments see post.] Second CityA show at PAFA argues Chicago’s maverick surrealism was a movement of its own.Jim Nutt, I’m All A’TWit, 1969 Early in the 20th century, while New York painters were plying their trade as abstractionists, artists in Chicago chose painted figures and landscapes of a dreamy surreality instead. A new ... More » »

Pa. Council grants, 2006

We just got an alert from regular contributor Rob Matthews that the Pa. Council on the Arts grants were announced. Here are the Philadelphia region’s fellows in visual and media arts. More details, plus info in other categories, other parts of the state, award sizes, etc., here. Joan Wadleigh CurranCarolyn HealyCheryl HessMelissa HoAlbo JeavonsAlex KanevskyEnid MarkJoe NaujokasRita F. NewberryPepon OsorioJohn PhillipsMatthew PrudenPeter RoseRebecca RutsteinWilliam SmithEva WylieMauro ZamoraMorgan CraigLeAnne EricksonMargaret L. Saligman Congratulations!!! We know so many of you, so we’re sending you hugs.

Calendar alerts

detail from a Fred Tomaselli piece, photo by Aaron Igler Artist Fred Tomaselli, who makes intricate images from materials embedded in resin, will speak Friday, 6 p.m. at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. For more information about his talk and about the “Swarm” exhibit, visit the Fab site. Nick Lenker’s “Mother and Bear” Image is one of Nick Lenker’s stuffed seating arrangements for the travelling British video festival coming to Nexus this Friday. Nick is a local. Kathy Butterly pieceshown at Carnegie International Clay artist Kathy Butterly, whose work we adored at the last Carnegie International, is talking Friday, Feb. ... More » »

Conti’s non-crayon coloring

contitwotrees Originally uploaded by sokref1. Give some people a coloring book and they WILL color! I did a little art project this holiday season like I do most years. It’s something to get me through what is perhaps my least-favorite time of the year. This being my flickr year where I actually started to consider the camera one of my art tools, I decided to make something based on my flickr images — a coloring book. I ran the images through Photoshop and laid it out in iPhoto and hallelujah there it was, a cyber book which I then printed ... More » »

Whol-y O’s, heavy O’s and Cheerios

pulsing oOriginally uploaded by sokref1. A friend told me of his son’s second birthday party. Adults stood around talking and munching near a table laid with some nice food and drinks and cake. The children huddled around a small table set with a bowl of Cheerios — their kind of party food. (top image is Tom Moody‘s animation from the O Show. Click the picture to see it bigger.) Children draw heads that are big O’s. Children love Spaghetti-o’s and Life Savers. Those are all flat O’s with holes in the middle that may not mean much when you’re two ... More » »

“Imitation of Life”–Stuart Netsky beneath the skin

It’s true that Stuart Netsky’s work is about time. But what he’s saying is more complicated than that, and those complications are what make his work resonate (image, one of Netsky’s nail polish on wood panel pieces from 1998, 5 3/4″ x 5 3/4″). Netsky, whose 20-year retrospective, “Imitation of Life,” is at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, by using the body as a metaphor, does indeed explore time. But he also explores the relationship of what’s on the outside, be it skin or fashion or nail polish or a vacuum cleaner cozy, to what’s on the inside. And as he gets ... More » »

Tracer: Ingrid Calame at ICA

The ramp at the Institute of Contemporary Art continues to be the most challenging space to do anything meaningful in, but lately, there’s been some good success–this lates success being the work of Ingrid Calame, who’s the eighth artist to tackle the space (image, detail of ramp installation with arrow indicating Calame, who is talking about her project to ICA members). Calame’s history of art making is in tracing stains, like oil stains, on pavement, and using the shapes to create her work. Most recently she has been using just the outlines of the tracings, layered into lacy images. This ... More » »

Looking for Warren

A hunt is on for former students of the late Warren Rohrer. Our fellow blogger Martin Bromirski at anaba, who went to UArts and studied under Rohrer, is seeking fellow travellers in Warren’s footsteps and any other UArts classmates with whom he has lost touch (image, Rohrer’s “Point One”). The post also mentions other UArts alums like Christine Hiebert, Joe Fyfe and Phong Bui. Here’s a link to Bromirski’s post.

Woes and cures

First the cure: If you’re looking for something on artblog and can’t find it on the artists index, try google. Put in the subject plus the word artblog and if we have it, there’s a pretty good chance that it will turn up. Now the woes behind the cure: We mention this now because we’re having a devil of a time with our artists index. It’s gone from glitchy to witchy, and has been on the fritz since some time in December. When it’s back on track, we’ll let you know. –r&l

Talking with Carlos Basualdo, part 2

Last week I told you about my meeting with Carlos Basualdo, new Curator of Contemporary Art at the PMA. Here is more from my interview with him: When I met Basualdo at the PMA for our interview, the youthful curator bounded down the west lobby steps to greet me and in spite of his jet-lag from returning from Venice less than 24 hours before (he’d been at a conference) he chatted with me for more than an hour. His cellphone rang repeatedly and apart from checking once to see if it was his wife calling (it wasn’t) he didn’t want ... More » »