May 2006 Archive

Adams Mark no more

Adams Mark Originally uploaded by sokref1. I was driving on City Ave around noon today and had forgotten about the old Adams Mark Hotel which I knew was empty and had heard might become a Target or something. But I didn’t realize they were going to tear the building down. Here it goes. No implosion this, it’s the old wrecking ball. I found a very sweet ode of farewell to the hotel from a person whose organization used to have their conventions there. Whatever it is, someone will miss it when it’s gone.

Post from Dayton is not in Ohio

Photo by Dayton Castleman of Milanese artist Paola Pivi”s “A Helicopter Upside Down in a Public Place” Dayton is not in Ohio–that would be local artist Dayton Castleman, who just returned from a trip to Austria and Germany and saw hot contemporary art as well as glorious old art.The link is to the contemporary post, but check out the others, too.

NOLA update from Chuck and Iris

News from Chuck Patch and Iris Lindberg Many of you followed the story of my New Orleans friends Chuck Patch and Iris Lindberg as they were displaced by Hurricane Katrina last August and stayed with us for a while before migrating to Queens and then eventually back home to their damaged (but not destroyed, luckily) home in the Uptown section. Here’s the most recent news on their situation, posted on their website, News from the Taj. It’s got some hope in it, a little humor, and much uncertainty about the future. Read some of the artblog back posts here, here, ... More » »

Weekly Update – James Turrell’s sublime spaces

This week’s Weekly includes my report on James Turrell’s talk last week sponsored by the Fairmount Park Art Association. Here’s the link to the art page and below is the copy. And here’s Libby’s post on the talk.Touch the SkyUsing light as his material, James Turrell brings the heavens down to earth. James Turrell‘s art career has been a journey to capture light and serve it up as art. The artist and MacArthur fellow, whose light projections are so convincingly three-dimensional that people have accidentally fallen into them, spoke at the Fairmount Park Art Association‘s 134th annual meeting. As he ... More » »

Artblog stars in Inky! See page D3

Also, in the same story, read about Shelley Spector‘s Art Jaw. Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/30/2006 | New Web site aims to take the anxiety out of art

One City, Two Art Worlds

Post by Edward M. Epstein Untitled (New Totems) by Jonathan Prull with Ivanny Pagan’s Foundation to left in back, plus more from the 2006 Penn MFA installation at the Ice Box Project Room at the Crane Art Center A recent evening’s sampling of cultural events revealed a telling rift in the arts scene here in the City of Brotherly Love. My first stop was the University of Pennsylvania’s MFA thesis show (see our posts here and here). The event was a lavish affair, filling several rooms of the very hip Crane Arts Building in Fishtown—including the gigantic Ice Box project ... More » »

Casino Royale at the Barnes? Ed Sozanski lets out a little steam

Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/28/2006 | Art | Yo, Diana! Rocky’s turnAugustus St. Gaudens’ Diana at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sozanski wants to see the Rocky statue go there instead. Are we a little angry, Mr. Sozanski? Asking for a substitution of Rocky for Diana (see it bigger here) inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art and saying the museum could live with it if each Rocky visitor were paying the $12 admission fee is hostile beyond words. And putting slots and a casino in the Barnes — and changing the slots’ whirling images from fruits to Renoirs and Cezannes for ... More » »

Smell-o-vision: Christopher Brosius at Klein Art

Christopher BrosiusOriginally uploaded by sokref1. The perfumer Christopher Brosius has installed scores of glass test tubes and other laboratory vessels at Klein Art Gallery and filled them with eau de “soaked earth, coffin, old fur coat, clean baby butt” and other essences concocted in his perfume labs. All the little jars are numbered but nowhere does the exhibit announce what exactly you’re sniffing in which jar or tube, and as I leaned over one, two, and 15 times and couldn’t really get a clear reading on the scent (does odor have a temporal quality — it must take a certain ... More » »

In passing

This was one of those months when I saw so much and couldn’t keep up. So I’m just throwing some images up here of some things that interested me, some more so than others, but all of which I thought were worth some mention. And that doesn’t even count Voxumenta, of which I wrote a big zippo. But there are images of that at least on my Flickr site. Randy Bolton, Going Soon, burned image on paper Randy Bolton at SchmidtDean showed work about the fading natural world, burnt into paper and onto the cut edges of logs. The images ... More » »

Penn MFA exhibit at the Icebox: Big is bigger but small may be better

Nathan WasserbauerOriginally uploaded by sokref1. I’ve done a few studio visits with young artists and usually at some point they say, apologetically, pointing at their easel- or pedestal-sized pieces, “These are small works. What I really want to do is something big. “ John Prull, Untitled (new totems). Big bird and chicks. made of cardboard, latex paint, screws, twine. $1,000. (a steal!) Small, I reply. Small is the way to go. The Penn MFA exhibit at the Icebox Project Space is full of really big works. Of course when you’re in graduate school is probably when you exercise your need ... More » »