February 2006 Archive

The monumentality of onesock

Mark Creegan, an artist in Jacksonville, FL, is one of my flickr friends. His flickr moniker is onesock which I like alot for its embrace of what many people consider a useless discard. Creegan’s art which I’ve seen online at his flickr pages and at his website makes use of discarded materials like children’s watercolor paints, rubber bands, magazines and what looks like mayonaise or salad dressing containers from Wendy’s. In arrangements that are whimsical and surprising Creegan transforms the ordinary into something that verges on the monumental. Intrigued by the art I saw I emailed the artist some questions ... More » »

Die, or join

Brian Tolle (facing us on the left) addressing the opening night crowd at the ICA, with the Ben Franklin portrait in the background, the snake in the foreground Ben Franklin is getting better looking by the day. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting on in years, losing my eyesight (not), losing my mind (maybe) or because I just saw this relatively youthful reimagining of him–part of the advertising campaign for his 300th birthday. What a hunk! Or maybe it’s the wit of Brian Tolle’s salute to Franklin installed at the Institute of Contemporary Art that has somehow shifted ... More » »

Our comments work!!!!

After nearly three years of comments failure, we finally got our comments working (actually, an elf did it for us)!!!!! We’re so excited we can bust. So go ahead and comment. We’d love to hear from you. Other artblog business matters: index We are changing the scope of our artists index to include the occasional name of exhibits. This will be helpful to us when we look, for example, for “Swarm” or “Artificial Worlds,” during one of those senior moments when we can’t think of the name of a single artist who was in the show but can recall the ... More » »

Weekly Update – We love Thomas Eakins

Eakins Originally uploaded by sokref1. This week’s Weekly includes my review of the new Sidney Kirkpatrick biography “The Revenge of Thomas Eakins,” a book I want to highly recommend as a great read. Not only does it have lots of details about the city but it’s a rich, nuanced portrait of a difficult, complicated man who was a tortured genius. Here’s the link to the art page and below is the copy with more pictures. Sculls and Bones Thomas Eakins was ambitious, hardworking, charismatic, opinionated, stubborn and a mischief-maker. It’s that combination of characteristics that fueled the artist’s genius-and turned ... More » »

If King Kong were a woman

unchainbbdprehills72 Originally uploaded by sokref1. artblog contributor and pal, Colette Copeland, sent us the mass blast email from the Guerilla Girls. They’re agitating against the white, male-dominated Hollywood film industry. We love the Guerilla Girls here at artblog. So we pass this on to you. Here, from the GG email: We took Kong, gave him a sex change and a designer gown, and set her up in Hollywood, just a few blocks from where the Oscars will be awarded March 5, 2006.Why? To reveal the sordid but True Hollywood Story about the lack of women and people of color behind ... More » »

Almost art

[What follows are a series of posts by students in Colette Copeland's art-writing class at the University of Pennsylvania about the Slought Foundation exhibit "Almost Art"] Post by Seth Manoff: Carlos Ginzburg’s installation of artificial flowers taken from graves The [exhibition] title’s irony is that regardless of the materials used, a lot of the pieces have much deeper meanings than many other contemporary counterparts that are “aesthetically pleasing.” For example, Carlos Ginzburg, in one of his pieces, has an area filled with artificial flowers taken from the cemetery. While viewers might not enjoy looking at fake flowers from the grave, ... More » »

Noses, poses and love

DSCN0650.jpg Originally uploaded by sokref1. “Why do they have elephant trunks instead of noses?” was Stella’s question when we saw John Shipman‘s “If You Believe” at Woodmere Art Museum. Good question. Shipman, a CFEVA artist and featured in Woodmere’s emerging artist series, makes highly stylized drawings based on Indian miniature paintings and on his feeling about the importance of love (love of one and love of the many). So, throughout his exhibition, which includes 24 small paintings and drawings on paper and board and one 80 ft.-long charcoal drawing on multiple panels, the bald-headed characters sport elephant trunks or bird ... More » »

Opportunity times two

Voxumenta The fun and savvy people at Vox Populi are doing it again. They’re organizing a survey exhibition of the best and brightest in the region. If that’s you, you want to submit your work for consideration. Last year’s Voxennial, guest-curated and juried by artist Virgil Marti and ICA Curator Elyse Gonzalez was a terrific show. See our posts here and here. This year’s jurors/curators are Emily Hage, Curatorial Fellow, Modern and Contemporary Art, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (she’s Carlos Basualdo‘s assistant) and Philadelphia-based artist, MacArthur fellow and widely-acclaimed installation and video artist Pepon Osorio. We at artblog ... More » »

Vimeo on demand

Vimeo video clip by Jakob Lodwick who is spinning on his office chair and lip synching to a dance tune. Sweet! Artnerd, one of my flickr friends sent me a link to vimeo a free video sharing site that’s run on the flickr model. (Jakob Lodwick conceived the site and the team of Lodwick and Zach Klein brought it to life a year ago. They say they have 27,000 users who’ve uploaded more than 40,000 clips now.) You get 20 megs of free disk space per week for your videos on vimeo, and the interface is very friendly: They encourage ... More » »

Game land

Email from John Murphy A still life from the series That Way the Feeling Never Ends, by John Murphy [L: I asked John Murphy if he played with video games after I suggested that his art reminded me of video game landscapes--see post. Here's what he answered:] I don’t play them, but find the reference really interesting. I had read somewhere recently (and this might not be news, but it was to me) that there are game designers who are creating these alternate possibilities to their games. The idea is that gamers can travel outside of the games intention and ... More » »