Posts By sam newhouse
Moods of Poe in words and colors — Ruth Scott Blackson’s Hidden City Festival installation at the Athenaeum
—>Sam visits the Athenaeum for an encounter with Edgar Allen Poe’s moody words in a Hidden City Festival project. — the artblog editors—————> A visit to Through the Pale Door, Ruth Scott Blackson’s installation inside the historic Philadelphia Athenaeum, begins with a guide leading you to the private library’s third-floor reading room. There, you will find Blackson’s creation: a trilogy of artist’s books, printed at the local Second State Press, each modeled on the colors in individual rooms in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1840s home on Seventh and Spring Garden streets. Page by page, each book pulls color swatches from the Poe house, ... More » »
Irregular Edges — Modernism and Caroline Santa and Mauro Zamora’s Precis at Rebekah Templeton
—In this post Sam tells us about a show with Modernist leanings by two local artists.–the artblog editors———————->The focus of Precis, an exhibition by Philadelphia artists Caroline Santa and Mauro Zamora now up in the one-room white box gallery space at Rebekah Templeton, is an escape from the outmoded and perhaps melodramatic implications of modernist composition through an alternative, playful use of its methodologies. This comes across clearly in the playful and energetic works by the two artists, which incorporate modernist tropes such as torn paper, borrowed images, and a light, fluctuating sense of meaning. A sophisticated vocabulary to deal with space Both artists ... More » »
Spacing Out — John Darling-Wolf and Abigail Patterson at Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space
Up now in the Mt. Airy Contemporary Artists Space (MACAS), the works of John Darling-Wolf and Abigail Patterson present inquiries into scale and form that leave one’s sense of proportion in suspense. Curator Andrea Keefe’s choice to pair these artists together was based on a feeling that the artists’ connections to one another go beyond their obvious affinity for off-kilter geometric constructs. Darling-Wolf’s and Patterson’s works complement one another on a number of levels, with the physical presence of Patterson’s drawings, some of which possess a metallic patina caused by the dense application of graphite over collages on paper, both ... More » »
Hidden City Festival 2013 — A spirited new Germantown Town Hall
Beginning May 23rd, artists became community organizers at the Hidden City Festival’s “Germantown City Hall” project, which opened inside the historic, long-abandoned Germantown Town Hall. “A lot of people have been asking, ‘Are you rehabbing the space?’ That’s been the top question,” said Meredith Warner, a member of the Germantown artists’ collective known as Think Tank that has yet to be named. More than a simple architectural renovation, however, Think Tank and Oakland-based artist Jacob Wick are activating the Town Hall building as a community gathering site for the duration of the 2013 Hidden City Festival (May 23 to June ... More » »
Hidden City Festival 2013 — Bibotorium imagines a world with or without water
As one of the nine projects that will revitalize lost parts of Philadelphia for the 2013 Hidden City Festival, Camp Little Hope arts collective will take over part of the Kelly Natatorium in Fairmount Park to create a “Bibotorium,” or educational saloon, in a forgotten former public pool. For the length of the festival, which runs from May 23rd to June 30th, guests will be invited to sit down for a cup of tea and then to ruminate on the possibly terrifying future of our access to viable, fresh drinking water. The Bibotorium site is steeped in Philadelphia’s historical relationship ... More » »
The Art of the Steal – Taken at Practice Gallery
–Sam asks a pressing question about appropriated art in his review of Taken. What is the value of the original work once it has been “taken?”—the artblog editors————————–>They stole their title from a Liam Neeson film, and then they figured, why not take the poster as well? That’s why Taken, which was up at Practice gallery for the month of April, has the same poster as one of Neeson’s recent violent-revenge films. But the idea behind Taken the show, curated by Dave Kyu and Ander Mikalson, is much more interesting than that of the film. Digital thievery The show celebrates ... More » »
Philadelphia gets broken down into CultureBlocks – a new online research tool
Resident artists of Philadelphia: yes, you are being tracked by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Resident artists is one of 50 cultural data sets mapped out in “CultureBlocks,” an interactive map of Philadelphia’s cultural assets that the city officially launched on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. The purpose of CultureBlocks Based on data from the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP), CultureBlocks is a map of cultural institutions and assets throughout Philadelphia. It’s not aimed at tourists or the art-viewing audience looking for a good show on a First Friday; CultureBlocks is actually intended as a ... More » »
Digital Colors Concealing the Bleakness Within: Victoria Fu at Marginal Utility and UArts
Victoria Fu has a developing ability to make blandness visually entrancing. Clearly, she’s an artist who can take the “filler” that most of us block out every day and make it her subject matter. Fu had two shows in Philadelphia this month – Lorem Ipsum, a premiere of new work at Marginal Utility (through May 26) and Time in Three Parts at the University of the Arts (now closed). Lorem Ipsum submerses you into pure, beautiful environments, gently controlled by the geometric interruption of digital editing. But there’s a darker, thematic bleakness at the center of this and other works by ... More » »
Hidden City festival returns next month with an emphasis on the audience
—Sam tells us about Hidden City Philadelphia, the upcoming festival that unites art and Philadelphia’s hidden architectural gems.–theartblog editors————— Philadelphia isn’t just a place for idle “ruin porn” gazers anymore. This summer, old, forgotten buildings and historic locations around the city will be brought to life for everybody’s eyes during the Hidden City Philadelphia Festival, the second such event in four years. Speaking at the Festival’s kick-off press conference, Peter Woodall, outreach director of Hidden City Philadelphia said that his festival, with nine projects in aging architectural landmarks throughout the city, goes much further than ruin porn. “There is a value ... More » »
Some thoughts on death before spring begins – an informal group show in Kensington
————-We’ve been following with interest the art scene’s northward drift on Frankford Avenue and are happy to note that along with the geographical sprawl come serious exhibitions, like this show. Below, Sam reveals that the exhibit plays with the idea of death and transitions, in art that includes memorials to a hive of dead bees, a dead cat, and an artist’s father. — Libby and Roberta——————————————- A 24-artist show curated by Sarah Finestone took over Finestone’s studio in Kensington this month, a building known as “Pile of Bricks.” The exhibit, Winter’s Bridge, presents a metaphor of a bridge out of winter, ... More » »
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