July 2008 Archive

Weekly Update – Robot love all over Pittsburgh

This week’s Weekly (online only) has my article about Robot 250, the city-wide festival celebrating Pittsburgh’s importance as a center for robotics. Below is the copy with some pictures. More photos at flickr. “You’re No. 1″ is a robotic foam finger installed atop The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh as part of the Robot 250 Festival, July 11-27. Ian Ingram, a senior research associate and artist-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University, built the robotic installation. When someone activates sensors in one of several remote kiosks, the robotic finger will turn and point at that person. Photo credit: Carnegie Mellon University Behind ... More » »

Honors for Philly-ites

a mixed media collage by Deborah Gross-Zuchman, part of her Windows Into War series A Puffin Foundation award went to Deborah Gross-Zuchman to continue getting into more hands her book of poetry and paintings, “Windows Into War.” The book is a response to the Iraq invasion at a time when her son Alex was an officer in the Marines. (He’s back in Philly, having survived the Marines and gone on to other things). One of the images related to this project–a mixed media collage/painting– is currently up at the Eakins House as part of the Mural Arts Program‘s Creative Capital ... More » »

What we want to see Friday

For this First Friday we suggest a show whose name we cannot pronounce — wildeornes but we like the image by Beth Brandon and we want to know more about that word and about her work. Also, this is the month of challenging poetic exhibit titles, including One Long Funeral Song at 1026 and Before You Wake, Before You Vanish at Copy. Topstitch Beth Brandon in Wildeornes at Topstitch Space 1026 Image by Kyle Ranson. Art Syndicate guru Derek Ihnat organized a two-person collaborative show at Space 1026. Monica Canilao and Kyle Ranson are both out of town artists (from ... More » »

Reading material for you on the head of the Mural Arts Program

Hello all you mural-obsessed people out there! Feed your mural obsession further by reading the very nice article on Jane Golden, head of the Mural Arts Program, by Melissa Dribben in Sunday’s Inquirer. And for yet more mural stuff, check out the MAP‘s staff exhibition, Creative Capital, at the Eakins House. Here’s one of the pieces from that show… Lindsay GrowTree60×40″

Studio visit: Miriam Singer maps the city

Works in progress by Miriam Singer As works on paper go, Philly artist Miriam Singer‘s work–talismanic cityscape-maps that record time and place and daily life in layers–is not so much on paper as of paper. And that makes these combination prints/drawings a good fit with all the paper cutting and 3-D paper work that’s been filling the galleries lately (see post). I paid her a studio visit a earlier this month, and learned she will be in The Rolling Canvas Art Collective, an exhibit and art auction at MBN August 1, of bike-related art presented by Fuji Bikes, Jinxed and ... More » »

New collaborative residency for artist and writer–ArtsEdge

New residencies for an artist and a writer, with subsidized rent for for living and working space near Penn, were announced by Kelly Writers House and Penn Design. The ArtsEdge residencies will provide shared living and working space for an “emergent” writer and artist for a year. The goal is to inspire interdisciplinary exploration (and to bring the action close to Penn’s campus in West Philadelphia). The application is due by Aug. 8, 2008. Here’s more info from the press release: Residencies last for one year and include a dedicated studio for each writer/artist, shared living space, and close affiliation ... More » »

FLUXspace takes on [Contemporary Portraiture]

Jessica Roberts, CJ Portraiture has always been a two-way street, an even more so in contemporary times, photographic portraiture. Are Sally Mann’s photos of her children more about the kids or more about Sally Mann, for instance. Are Cindy Sherman’s self-portraits about Cindy Sherman or someone else. Just what/who are we looking at? At FLUXspace, two photographers take on problematic forms of portraiture. Jessica Roberts and Chad Muthard couldn’t be more different in their approaches and their results. Jessica Roberts, Dan Roberts, a young photographer whose work has been seen around Philadelphia, most notably at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery’s L’Autre exhibit (post ... More » »

More of Philly out and about

Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironika, The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, as seen at the Crane’s Ice Box space here in Philadelphia. It’s traveling to L.A. This from Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironaka: If you’re in LA or NYC in the next week, we hope you’ll be able to check out our most recent projects–The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, and Black Hole. The Soft Epic opens at Telic Arts Exchange in LA’s Chinatown this coming Saturday, July 26th, and runs through late August. Helen Cahng has organized the exhibition and related public programs ... More » »

Philly artists out and about

Christopher Davison, Girl with Yellow Legs, 2008, Micron, Pitt pen, gouache, acrylic, ink wash, colored pencil and collage on paper, 50 x 30 inches Philly artists are all over the place lately, and we’re having trouble getting out all the news of who is showing where. We missed the deadlines on getting a lot of the info up, but here’s a group that’s still fresh. Chris Davison in New York There’s still another week or two to catch the possessed Chris Davison in My Happy Demons. It runs to Aug. 10 at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York. Bobos in ... More » »

Marisa Olson at Esther Klein Gallery

Marisa Olson, Some Nice Looking Sound Files, I think this is #8, Iris Print, 32 inches x 42 inches Artist Marisa Olson takes on one of the building blocks of the Internet and the computer–background imagery–with wit and verve, stealing the familiar wallpapers and animated gifs, reimagining them in gigantic proportions–from bits to bytes to pure gluttony. Marisa Olson, The New Transparency (diptych), detail, Iris Prints, each 32 x 26.5 inches Her exhibit Background Information at Esther Klein Gallery includes new work. It’s a load of fun, a small exhibit that takes on the graphics used to express sound files, ... More » »