Posts By libby

My heart in San Francisco

Recession-proof Union Square is finally looking a little frayed around the edges. On this visit we saw a number of closed storefronts where there had been businesses before. We also saw scrappy young galleries closer in to the center of things, which says to me that rents are down. But the place is still glorious–and green. Even the hotel is green, with recycling bins and reduced linens laundering. Big deal, you may say, but on a recent trip to New York, we stayed in a hotel room with only trash cans. In a parking lot next to Crissy Field in ... More » »

San Francisco part 1–a gallery find

The pleasure of happening on unexpected art–maybe a stencil on the sidewalk, maybe a public sculpture–happened more than once to me last week in San Francisco. The first time was a gallery window I passed while walking toward Union Square. The work was a taxidermied deer head attached to an ultra-long neck hanging off of a modest wooden trophy placque. The head and neck were covered in a homey, crocheted sweater with wooden buttons. The merger of the traditional tender craft with a macho trophy, the luchera mask (or is it a balaclava?) with the Dr. Who scarf, pulled me ... More » »

Peeps madness and holiday silliness

Peeps, those little marshmallow sweets that fill an Easter basket, have become a craft trendlet. First my friend Cindy told me her daughter’s workplace was in a Peeps diorama contest. Cindy emailed me the Wee Willie Wonka entry. Then my friend Andy sent along an ABA Law Journal contest. Who said lawyers don’t have a sense of humor? He also linked me to a Chicago Tribune contest, but the energy there seemed kind of low. I don’t get the Easter passion for Peeps, but I do get being silly. Besides, Peeps are a fine art material too. I’m thinking about Gabe ... More » »

Arcadia’s A Closer Look 8: Dechemia, Leclercq, Shaddock, Wahl

How, I say to myself, am I going to write about this show that brings up issues of What is Contemporary Art? and What is art of any kind? It’s a show that wrestles with beauty, concepts, the handmade, and even more narrowly, the made and not made, and the material and immaterial. It also wrestles with group show constraints–the meaning of being jammed into one space with others whose work impinges on your own in some way–and talks to your own, redefining and expanding, in the best of worlds. The show is A Closer Look 8, the show at ... More » »

MFAs Erica Prince and Brandon Dean at Tyler

With clarity of thought and swell objects , work by Erica Prince and by Brandon Dean stood out in the first group of four solo MFA shows at Temple Art Gallery last week. Erica Prince, Other Ways of Being Prince is a big thinker–inventing new universes and new ways of life for new life forms in dreamy, poetic landscapes of bumps, tubes, and planet-like structures. The show Other Ways of Being includes both 3-D and 2-D works that give vent to imaginings that are both familiar enough to charm, unfamiliar enough to intrigue. Her central installation is a mirror rug ... More » »

West Philadelphia looking is good

Art in West Philadelphia is blooming with the early flowers of this super-heated spring, partially thanks to the mix of artists who are making a trip to the farmer’s market or the cafe turn into a bohemian rhapsody. The gallery at the University City Arts League is offering up more lively, more sophisticated fare lately thanks to some new leadership. Fortieth Street Artists in Residence continues to percolate with an occasional good show and on-campus Penn-related galleries, often unengaged in the local wealth of the city art scene, are heading for homeplate. At Fortieth Street AIR, which is always engaged ... More » »

Gabe Martinez & Chad States at the Print Center, after 30 years of AIDS

Two men known for their art work about gay sex, spoke about the work and the sex at the Print Center Feb. 23. Now thirty years after AIDS became a public health issue, artists Gabriel Martinez and Chad States expressed their attitudes toward gay sexual practices in the age of AIDS and how those attitudes were expressed in their art. Print Center Curator John Caperton moderated. For all the differences between the two artists–Chad States is younger and is more carefree and open about his sexual practices. He read a story about his first anonymous sexual encounter as a teen, ... More » »

Onward Compe at Project Basho

This year’s version of Project Basho‘s annual Onward show was juried by someone whose work I have long admired, the nationally known photographer Todd Hido. The show includes includes 57 photographs by 50 artists. Last year the juror was Larry Fink, and the year before, Peter Barberie. To get chosen for this show is a terrific chance to get seen. As in so many large, group shows, the olio of images is just that, a melange, which makes for a tough environment for an artist to show a single, lonely image. For the most part,  photographers can hardly earn their ... More » »

The Boss–from Cleveland to Philly

You might have heard about the Bruce Springsteen exhibit now up at the National Constitution Center about a year ago on artblog. I saw From Asbury Park to the Promised Land at its organizing institution the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland. I am republishing the entire post here; you can find what I said about the exhibit half-way down the post: Philadelphia and Cleveland have a lot in common in part because they each are eclipsed by a nearby major, international metropolitan area–New York and Chicago respectively. When our host (we were in Cleveland at the beginning ... More » »

Jennifer Bolande’s Landmarks at the ICA

“Landmarks” at the ICA is the first major survey of Jennifer Bolande‘s influential works, mostly of photos re-imagined as objects and vice versa. The exhibit of 40 works, curated by Nicholas Frank, is better than my experience at the artist’s walk-through suggested. But I went back again because I found myself thinking about Bolande (pronounced bo-LAND-dee) in relation to contemporary work I have been seeing around town. Bolande’s work on exhibit is from a 30-year period beginning in 1980. Specifically, I was interested in returning because of the conversation in my head between Bolande’s photographic inquiries and those of Matt ... More » »