December 2009 Archive

Bonne Année : Rick Tulka

Rick Tulka, Paris-based artist and illustrator best known for his on-the-spot sketches of flâneurs burning daylight and washing back kirs at Le Select, the famed café on Boulevard Montparnasse, offers a self-portrait greeting for 2010. Yes, that was him, penciling in your double chin last Tuesday! Only kidding. Bonne Année… See his site here: Rick Tulka and his portraits of people on his Flickr Page.

Weekly Update – Beautiful with fur or feathers

This week’s Weekly has my review of Beautiful Creatures at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Bennie, a Moluccan cockatoo, looks like he’s about to deliver the punchline of a salty joke. A red fox evokes Joan Rivers on the red carpet, her mouth open and big, dark eyes looking straight at you, an aging raconteur. And a barn owl is a diva on the runway, wings up and strutting. These gorgeous animals, captured in dramatic black-and-white photos by University of the Arts students, exude star power at the Academy of Natural Sciences’ new Art of Science gallery.

Theater for the Holidays!

by Debra Miller I’m posting a quick holiday reminder about some of the terrific plays in Philadelphia this month.  As you probably already know, with the present state of our economy, many of the small theater companies in Philadelphia are in extra need of support.  I have seen several outstanding productions in December, some sold out, but some with half-empty audiences, so I’m hoping that all of you can find the time to attend one or more of these, to keep the theater companies going strong in this time of recession. Check out their websites for tickets; you’ll be glad that ... More » »

Caricaturist David Levine, dead at age 83

You probably know his works from the New York Review of Books where his black and white drawings were featured since 1963 bringing dark humor and beauty to writings about political and literary figures.  See untold numbers of his caricatures at the New York Review’s online gallery. What I didn’t know, and learned from this obit in the NY Times, is that Levine was a Temple and Tyler School of Art grad, with degrees in education and art.

Road trip

I’m heading to Florida for New Year’s Eve. It’s a roadtrip with another couple–long time old friends for our annual New Year’s get-together with a still larger group of old friends. We’ll probably hit some wind and rain and chilly weather, but we’ve got the dueling iPods and CDs of This American Life and comedian Steven Wright to keep us entertained. Woo hoo! Happy New Year, everyone.

Deathsheads revisited–Antonio Martorell at Taller

Thoughts of death vs. breath abound in internationally renowned artist Antonio Martorell’s installation of woodcut prints at Taller Puertorriqueno. The exhibit, La Plena Inmortal, embraces celebration and mourning, beauty and horror, the past and the present, humor and seriousness, vanity and all-is-vanity in a most Latino way.

Philly artists registry for public art

Looks like the Philadelphia Public Art program has revived its artists registry in an online form! The city is inviting artists who want to be considered for public art projects in Philadelphia to add their information. Here’s more info and the registration form.

Philaplace is our place–especially Southwark and NoLibs

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has started up a sort of Philadelphia historical wiki site called philaplace.com, featuring text, audio and video stories about Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. The first neighborhoods on the site are Old Southwark and Northern Liberties–two of Philadelphia’s oldest immigrant and working-class neighborhoods. I see that the Crane Arts Center and around the corner the Al Aqsa Islamic Society are already up there. I guess the neighborhood definitions are loose! So if you have content–personal and historical- to contribute about those neighborhoods, check out the site and put it in. Other neighborhoods to come. You can follow the ... More » »

Book-stravaganza 2 – Monographs and show catalogs

Chris Ofili Foreword by Peter Doig, conversation with Thelma Golden, contributions by David Adjaye, Carol Becker, Okwui Enwezor, Cameron Shaw and Kara Walker hardcover, 272 pages, 200 color images and b&w drawings, 2009 $85 Rizzoli New York This gorgeous coffee table book about the works of Afro-British artist Chris Ofili is a love affair from start to finish. Great photos of the works — in situ in gallery spaces and in amazing closeups of the rambunctious details — make for hours of satisfactory page-turning. There’s just enough words and pretty much the right words to keep the volume chugging along. ... More » »

Where art video and movies meet?

Reading the New York Times today, I came across a review of Sita Sings the Blues, an 2008 animated epic tale of love gone wrong in the here and now and the there and then. The tale, set in San Francisco, New York and India is based on the Sita/Krishna affair in the Ramayana. This musical cartoon mash up of Indian miniature art, Betty Boop and Busby Berkeley is based on the true story of the artist/film auteur, Nina Paley. The narrative is provided by a Greek chorus of three shadow-puppet Indians with contemporary voices and views, who argue over ... More » »