Posts By roberta

Utopian impulses in wood – Francis Cape and Kevin Strickland

Francis Cape‘s 20 spare poplar benches at Arcadia University Art Gallery imply people sitting together purposely (if not comfortably) maybe in church or while eating a meal in a dining hall. Cape’s benches, all hand-made by the artist in the last two years, are replicas of seating used by the Shakers, Hutterites and 14 other utopian communities.  They are functional furniture, but more than that, they are a conceptual art project. Lined up in rows, each bench facing the center of the room, Cape’s benches represent the idea that sitting on the same bench is about something more than just ... More » »

Earthly Delights in Norristown – Emily Erb and Nakima Ollin at Pagus

I still feel a bit like the new girl in town: keen to explore the city and its surroundings, discover interesting art and meet new people. It was lovely, therefore, to find myself in West Philly artist Nakima Ollin’s car last Saturday, driving to see the two-person show Earthly Delights in the Norristown Arts Building. Pagus Gallery’s large, bright space and winding corridors were filled with two artists’ works: Ollin’s intricate paintings and drawings and Emily Erb’s large-scale, dyed silk works.

Collective energy in North Philly

On a fair weather First Friday, Old City bustles with galleries full of people and streets lined with craft vendors, musicians and performers. It’s positively festive. But every day across Philadelphia, artist-run collectives present a different art scene that in many ways is more exciting. In the last five years, Little Berlin, Extra Extra and other artist-run spaces have sprouted up in neighborhoods such as Kensington and Chinatown, where rents are cheap and raw spaces lend themselves to edgy experimental art. This is a gritty scene run by young people who want to do it themselves. The artists know each other and ... More » »

Business genius and hippie, Steve Jobs – The Lost Interview

In 1995 Robert Cringeley, a tech expert and writer who once worked for Steve Jobs interviewed the Apple-co-founder and other Silicon Valley pioneers for a PBS miniseries, Triumph of the Nerds. He spent more than 60 minutes with Jobs, who at that time was ten years out from his wrenching ouster from Apple. But less than ten minutes of the wide-ranging and provocative interview made it into the PBS show. That ten minute clip is considered one of the best TV interviews Jobs ever gave. The master tapes for the other 59 minutes went missing until recently and now, dusted ... More » »

Jeffrey Eugenides at the Free Library – On keeping yourself in and out of your novel

The big question at the sold out “Evening with Jeffrey Eugenides” at the Free Library Tuesday night was posed mid-way through the Q&A after a marvelous reading by the author from his new novel, The Marriage Plot. The questioner fumbled around with words that didn’t make a coherent question but which Eugenides knew the meaning of:  Basically, how autobiographical is Middlesex, his 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel whose main character is an intersex individual (hermaphrodite) of Greek descent from Detroit named Cal Stephanides.

The adventure of landscape – Becky Suss at Vox Populi

By Hayley Tomlinson Imagine waking up from a vivid black-and-white dream, in which you explored a recognizable yet distant city dense with foliage and structure, where the most intricate details were highlighted despite a sunless, cloudy sky, and you weren’t quite sure whether you were looking at a mural or real life. This is exactly how I felt when first viewing Becky Suss’ drawings, on display at Vox Populi. Her landscape drawings, void of any human activity, made me reminisce about being a child and exploring the depths of my grandma’s backyard, or weaving in and out of the strange ... More » »

The craft of art told by two exhibits at ICA – Bill Walton’s Studio and Charline von Heyl

Libby and I met recently with the new brain trust at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Chief Curator Sarah Archer and Executive Director Molly Dougherty. In a broad-ranging discussion about Philadelphia’s art scene and institutions and the PAA’s long history as an on-again-off-again player in the city, Archer mentioned they were very interested in exploring their mission — craft and design — in a way that breaks the mold of the traditional craft exhibit with objects on pedestals and in vitrines. They want to broaden their program to include a discussion of the making of objects and the thinking behind the ... More » »

On the avenue – Lancaster Avenue that is

Queries, or queer eyes, as the show’s organizer, Blaise Tobia, pronounced the title when I visited, gathers human-centric works — mostly photographic — that take you on an exploration of the world. It’s a quirky trip, led by five able and idiosyncratic artist-explorers. And as Tobia says in his curator’s statement …”these works function…in a way that I wish more art functioned — playful, but by no means trivial; evocative rather than didactic; formally astute but not self-satisfied.”

Shout out to a show that closes tomorrow – Nick Paparone and Dan Murphy at Fleisher-Ollman

This is a particularly good exhibit to look at as Occupy Philadelphia and Occupy Wall Street continue.  There’s little love for corporations in either Murphy’s or Paparone’s works, and yet, and yet, there’s a clear love of production; of doing it yourself; of personal empowerment that’s very 99 percent and quite a bit like what the founding fathers had in mind when they set up personal freedoms for individuals. Nick Paparone – Accents for the Self-Made Man

Rainbow Connection on First Friday – a few pictures and thoughts on lovers and dreamers

The first thing I saw before going into the Vox building last Friday was a rainbow. Well, a reference to a rainbow anyway. And like those real emanations of light and color after a hard rain, the wheat-paste poster cheered me up and made me laugh. A toss off, perhaps — a smart, on the money parody of the city’s tourism marketing posters — it set the bar high for my very, very brief visit inside.