May 2011 Archive

News- 2012 Wind Challenge winners, Happy Fernandez to resign next year and more

Wind Challenge artists for 2012 The Wind Challenge announced the nine artists for its series of 2012 juried shows. Through a blind jury selection process, the artists were chosen out of a pool of nearly 200 applicants. This year will mark the exhibition series’ 34th year.

New podcast – Susan Myers on art, beauty and thrift shopping

Locks Gallery sponsors this episode. Susan Myers‘ art lies between art and craft. Her beautifully-made sculptural objects are crafted from re-used thrift shop finds, especially those engraved commemorative silver tea trays that get discarded after years of sitting in a drawer or on a shelf.  Myers also makes exquisite bows (like gift package bows) out of aluminum roof flashing.  Her work questions values and life styles and employs humor along the way. The artist, who is from Virginia originally, has an MFA from Syracuse University and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Susan talks about how the art and craft ... More » »

LPV Magazine – curated photo exhibit coming to your mailbox

When is a magazine not a magazine? Maybe when it’s got so many good things in it you don’t throw it away. Or maybe when it looks more like a book than a magazine.

Last Ride of Andria Morales with stuffing by Beth Beverly

Andria Morales used to be Andria Bibiloni. But since her art work is all about her identity–and Puerto Rican identity in the U.S., and everyone else’s identity as well, she decided to stage a funeral for the artist formerly known as Bibiloni.

Caroline Santa’s Coda at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

By Julian Phillips Caroline Santa’s Coda is an invigorating look at the creative process. Santa’s work at first glance is an experimentation in form and color, but when the realization settles that all of the works are pieces that have had form removed from them, new dimensions are opened. These new dimensions seem to excite Santa, who sees Coda as a beginning.  

On Style and the Coherence of Work

By Joshua Weibley An image of a set of conditions (as in “medical imaging”) is an overview of these conditions which summarizes them. In this way, generally, images are the concise products of analysis; they simplify to explain and provide summary.

A Seed on Diamond Gallery grows

Daniel Petraitis is omnipresent this month, it seems. Besides his iconic t-shirt at Rebekah Templeton, he is in another group show, To-Day is another Day, Make Art at Pterodactyl Gallery. And he also had a too brief, two-week solo show at A Seed on Diamond, a beautiful gallery in a rowhouse on Norris Square.  

Becky Suss’s Cold, Cold Ground at Space 1026

By Diana Jih Becky Suss embraces remembrance and her artistic seasonal affective disorder through a series of multi-textured oil landscapes at her first solo exhibition in Philadelphia, Cold Cold Ground, on display at Space 1026. Her wintry mix of iced-over hidden streams and snowed-in backyard gardens calls to mind the past season and the missing places of spring. Those places exist once again in these recreated memories. During her First Friday opening, “Green River” and “wish you were here” twinged my nostalgia for pockets of rural New England I’ve happened upon in previous years.

Susan Myers’ witty metal work, next on artblog radio

Susan Myers is a visual artist and metalsmith in Philadelphia who makes beautiful objects out of discarded wedding presents like those engraved silver tea trays you find in thrift shops.  There’s humor in Myers’ work and questioning of values.   Susan graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and has an MFA from Syracuse University.  Her work was included in the recent “2000 Years of Sculpture” exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. Her solo show at the Museum of Ornamental Metal in Memphis last year was called “potently witty” and full of ambiguity and ambivalence.  Here’s a quick sample of our talk. Next Monday listen ... More » »

Theory, photos and play – Vox Populi’s May shows

Some of what’s on view at Vox Populi this month is mystifying and theory-driven; some is digitally-savvy and soulful, and some is digitally-savvy and formalist. Happily, there’s also a piece that is downright lovable in the up-from-the-basement DIY way.